Ellen Presby Named Public Justice President
Ellen Presby gives a speech at the 2025 Public Justice Awards Dinner and Gala, held at the Four Seasons in San Francisco on July 21, 2025.
There are two things Ellen Presby has always known about herself: she has a strong sense of justice, and she would become a lawyer.
“I very clearly have a memory of sitting in Ms. Herringer’s third-grade reading class, writing out my life plan,” Presby said, “and that included being a lawyer and fighting for justice.”
With a career spanning over four decades, Presby has done just that and has a track record to match the dream she mapped out for herself years ago. Currently a partner at the plaintiffs’ firm of Ferrer Poirot Feller, Presby started her career defending product liability cases. After starting a law firm with her husband in 1991, the Texas-based attorney continued with mostly civil defense product liability and added defense work in business litigation and environmental cases. Ten years later, Fred Baron and Lisa Blue, founders of Public Justice, recruited her to join the law firm of Baron and Budd. And when she joined Baron and Budd, she immediately became a member of Public Justice.
“In 2001, I think Fred’s first move with me was to sign me up with Public Justice, and his second was to sign me up with AAJ [American Association of Justice],” Presby recalled. “And I learned about the organization from him and Russell Budd and was lucky to have a law firm that supported our firm’s involvement in the organization.”
It was with Baron and Budd that Presby started representing plaintiffs on environmental cases, as well as product liability and pharmaceutical product cases.
“The pharmaceutical product cases are what really got me into mass tort,” she said. “I’ve handled so many products over the years, and I’ve stayed in those practice areas the whole time.”
Since then, she has served as a lead attorney for a number of cases in these fields, with a specialty in pharmaceutical injury litigation. During her time with Baron and Budd, president of the firm Russell Budd asked Presby to help with a nationwide class action settlement in the FenPhen diet drug lawsuits. A trust with $3.75 billion had been set up to pay victims injured by the drug, a combination of fenfluramine and phentermine that caused heart valve damage. Over time, another 40,000 victims came forward with health conditions related to using the drug but did not require surgical correction. Serving as co-lead negotiator on the settlements, Presby helped lead an effort to secure another $1.275 billion in funds for members of that 40,000-person class.
In addition to helping hundreds of people, Presby said she remembers this experience as one that allowed her to practice law nationally.
“I really loved that,” she said. “That experience opened my eyes to a ton of good and bad in the world, and an understanding that motivation can be multifaceted, that you can be motivated to do good for the planet, but also motivated to do good for your client, and it’s wonderful when those converge.”
This nationwide perspective is one that Presby now brings to — and appreciates about — the work that Public Justice’s staff attorneys do every single day.
“Public Justice implements its issues and goals with a wider lens — to understand the full ranging implications of what they’re doing,” she said. “They never just handle one case without completely understanding and analyzing the impact that it could have all over the country on similar or tangential issues. It’s so smart to approach issues in the way that Public Justice does, and I am drawn to the staff’s ability and willingness to work that way, because it takes a lot more strategy, effort, and foresight.”
Now as president of the Board of Directors, Presby wants to make sure her fellow board members see how valuable the staff is in trying to combat the harms at work in our legal system — and society — today. For her, it’s about finding ways to work together while also honoring the expertise of those continuing the mission of Public Justice.
Even this mission of her presidency is rooted in the national context she’s gained, both in her career and in her formative years.
“I moved to California when I was 16, stayed there through the end of college, and I came back [to Texas] for law school,” she said. “Getting the different viewpoints of Texas conservatives, then California that understood what it meant to be blue before we even used that term, I think that gave me a really good perspective on trying to bring groups together…We do all have many of the same goals.”
At a time in United States history that is intensely divided, where it feels like more and more rights are being stripped away, Presby said she is grateful for Public Justice’s efforts to keep fighting for what’s right.
“Public Justice provides a voice to the downtrodden, to people who would have no place to turn but for Public Justice,” she said. “I am so proud to be part of an organization that fights, that we are an organization that recognizes that all people deserve the same rights. That’s an easy thing to say, but Public Justice sees how it plays out when it’s not implemented quite that way. And that very much aligns with my driving core values.”