Fourteen Lawyers in Two Exceptional Cases Win 2003 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award

Two California Trial Teams Share Award for Civil Rights Victory in Estate of Judi Bari and Marianas Sweatshop Settlement Protecting Workers’ Rights

Environmental activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in concert. Photo by Evan Johnson.

Fourteen trial lawyers who worked on two outstanding public interest cases have won the 2003 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. Solo practitioners Dennis Cunningham, J. Tony Serra, Robert Bloom and Ben Rosenfeld of San Francisco, and William A. Simpich of Oakland, California, along with William H. Goodman of Moore & Goodman in New York and Michael E. Deutsch of The People’s Law Office in Chicago received the nationally prestigious award from The Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ) Foundation at its 21st Anniversary Gala on July 22, 2003, for winning a rare $4.4 million jury verdict in Estate of Judi Bari v. Doyle against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the City of Oakland for violating the civil rights of two environmental activists during a 1990 bomb investigation.

Garment workers in a sweatshop. Photo by Global Exchange.

Michael Rubin of Altshuler Berzon Nussbaum Rubin & Demain in San Francisco and Alan M. Caplan of Bushnell, Caplan & Fielding, LLP in San Francisco, Albert H. Meyerhoff, Jr. of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP in Los Angeles, Pamela M. Parker and Keith F. Park of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP in San Diego, Joyce C.H. Tang of Teker Civille Torres & Tang in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, and L. Thomas Galloway of Galloway & Associates in Boulder, Colorado also received the 2003 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for reforming living and working conditions for sweatshop workers in six Asian Pacific nations and a U.S. territory by negotiating a comprehensive $20 million settlement of three novel human rights class actions on behalf of approximately 30,000 garment workers.

This award is bestowed annually upon the trial lawyer or lawyers who have made the greatest contribution to the public interest by trying or settling a precedent-setting case. It is the nation’s single most prestigious award for trial lawyers.

"These exceptional attorneys offer powerful examples of how trial lawyers play a crucial role in exposing and redressing government intrusion and corporate misconduct," said outgoing Foundation President Paul Stritmatter of Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Withey Coluccio in Hoquiam, Washington. "We are proud to honor them for their exemplary work defending the Constitution and protecting workers’ rights."

In Estate of Judi Bari v. Doyle the jury found that both the FBI and the City had violated the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, under the false cover of a "terrorist" investigation. The verdict in this case sends a strong, cautionary message about the value of our constitutional rights and the abuse of law enforcement power in the name of national security.

As part of the $20 million settlement of the Marianas Sweatshop Litigation, the federal court of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands ordered the implementation of a model Code of Conduct and a monitoring program to prevent the recurrence of human rights abuses that have plagued the Saipan garment industry sweatshops for 15 years. These attorneys devoted 70,000 hours to the three cases over a four-year period. Millions of dollars in legal fees were waived during the course of the litigation and new standards for fighting to protect workers’ rights were put in place.

The TLPJ Foundation also presented the newly-created Access to Justice Award to TLPJ Staff Attorneys Leslie A. Brueckner and Michael J. Quirk, for their roles in winning a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision securing access to justice for injury victims nationwide in Sprietsma v. Mercury Marine. Brueckner briefed and argued the landmark federal preemption case, and Quirk assisted with the briefing and preparation for oral argument.

The other finalists for the 2003 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award, also honored at the gala, were:

• David H. Dunaway of the Law Offices of David H. Dunaway & Associates in LaFollette, Tennessee, fought for three years to win-and successfully defend and appeal-a case that safeguards indigent families’ access to heath care in rural Tennessee. The verdict in LaFollette Medical Center v. City of LaFollette represents an important victory for affordable, accessible health care.

• J. Don Gordon of Hynds & Gordon, P.C. in Sherman, Texas, and solo practitioners George Parker Young and Nikki Grote Morton of Fort Worth, Texas, who won a precedent-setting $13 million verdict-$10 million of it in punitive damages-when a Dallas jury found in June 2002 that Cigna Healthcare of Texas put cost-saving measures ahead of a patient’s life. The verdict in Pybas v. Cigna Healthcare of Texas marked the first time that plaintiffs won a case tried under the state’s 1997 Health Care Liability Act that allows injured patients to sue a health maintenance organization (HMO) for medical malpractice.

• Ford Greene of Hub Law Offices in San Anselmo, California, and solo practitioners Charles B. O’Reilly of Marina Del Rey, California, Daniel A. Leipold of Santa Ana, California, and Craig J. Stein of Los Angeles, fought an epic 22-year battle-which included two appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court and successful defenses of several countersuits against the plaintiff and his legal team-to collect a multimillion dollar jury verdict for a man who was psychologically and financially ruined by the Church of Scientology. Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology is a landmark victory for former members of Scientology, which is known for its heated and protracted legal battles.

• LJ Leatherman, Gary D. White, Jr., and Jerry Palmer of Palmer, Leatherman & White, L.L.P. in Topeka, Kansas, and Kiehl Rathbun of Rathbun Law Office in Wichita, Kansas, achieved a groundbreaking victory for due process rights, securing an injunction that stopped the City of Wichita from imprisoning people for failing to pay traffic and misdemeanor fines, freeing 62 people from what amounted to a debtor’s prison, and winning a $10 million class action settlement on behalf of 7,111 people whom the City had wrongfully imprisoned. The National Judicial College uses Reinschmiedt v. City of Wichita to teach new judges the dangers of converting monetary sentences into jail time.

• Stephen M. Tillery, George A. Zelcs, Steve A. Swedlow, Donald M. Flack, and Lisa R. Kernan of Carr Korein Tillery LLC in Chicago, Michael J. Brickman, Jerry Hudson Evans, Kimberly S. Keevers, Gregory A. Lofstead, James C. Bradley, and Nina Hunter Fields of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman, LLC of Charleston, South Carolina, and Gerson H. Smoger of Smoger & Associates, P.C. in Dallas pursued an innovative legal strategy to win a precedent-setting $10.1 billion damages judgment (including $3 billion in punitive damages) against the nation’s largest tobacco company in the first class action lawsuit tried on behalf of "light" cigarette smokers. Stephen A. Sheller of Sheller, Ludwig & Badey P.C. in Philadelphia was also named as a finalist in this case for discovering the light cigarette fraud and initiating the litigation strategy to remedy the deception. The landmark consumer fraud judgment in Price v. Philip Morris USA, paves the way for new lines of attack against the tobacco industry as a whole.

• D. Frank Winkles and Claude H. Tison of Winkles Law Group, P.A. in Tampa, Florida set the stage for exposing an insurance giant’s rampant bad faith practices in Tedesco v. The Paul Revere Life Insurance Co., winning a $36.7 million punitive damages verdict against an insurance company that wrongfully denied disability payments to an ophthalmologist disabled by Parkinson’s disease and a back injury. This case stands as an example of how tenacious trial lawyers can force corporate giants to change their practices by making them pay for their wrongdoing.

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Trial Lawyers for Public Justice is the only public interest law firm dedicated to using trial lawyers’ skills and resources to advance the public good. Founded in 1982, TLPJ utilizes a network of more than 3,000 of the nation’s outstanding trial lawyers to pursue precedent-setting and socially significant litigation. TLPJ has a wide-ranging litigation docket in the areas of consumer rights, worker safety, civil rights and liberties, toxic torts, environmental protection, and access to the courts. TLPJ is the principal project of The TLPJ Foundation, a not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a West Coast office in Oakland, California. The TLPJ web site address is www.publicjustice.net.