Robert Leslie Palmer

A Birmingham lawyer who mounted a crusade against a system that favored corporate interests over the victims of hazardous chemical exposure has been named winner of Public Justice Foundation’s Access to Justice Award.

 

Robert Palmer and his Alabama Legal Reform Foundation tirelessly fought to change Alabama’s statute of limitations on toxic tort complaints – a limit that required victims to file a complaint within two years of their last exposure to the offending chemical, meaning that those who did not have any symptoms or diagnosis until after two years had passed were out of luck.

 

In two editorials, the New York Times urged justice for Jack Cline, one of Palmer’s clients, who sued the makers and suppliers of benzene, a carcinogenic chemical that he was exposed to for years on the job. Cline had acute myelogenous leukemia, which is linked to benzene exposure, but his case was thrown out of court because he was not diagnosed with the disease until well after the  two-year statute of limitations had expired.

 

Palmer’s multi-pronged strategy to change the law so that ordinary people could have their day in court included educating the public about the issue; generating media attention; drafting and promoting remedial legislation; and challenging a 1979 Alabama Supreme Court ruling that had upheld the two-year statute of limitations. A favorable decision in his case, Griffin v. Unocal Corporation, overturned the 30-year-old ruling.

 

The award was presented to Palmer on July 15 at the Public Justice Foundation Annual Gala and Awards Dinner in Philadelphia.