Public Justice Announces Finalists for 2025 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award

Public Justice Announces Finalists for 2025 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award

Public Justice has announced the finalists for the 2025 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. The TLOY Award celebrates and recognizes the accomplishments of an attorney or a team of attorneys who made the greatest contribution to the public interest within the past year by trying or settling a precedent-setting, socially significant case. This year’s award will be presented at the organization’s 43rd Annual Gala & Awards Presentation on Monday, July 21, 2025 in San Francisco.

The three finalist teams for Public Justice’s 2025 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award include an impressive group of attorneys from across the country, who took on cases that address climate change, carcinogens, and consumer protection.

“At a time when the willingness of the legal community to speak truth to power has been tested, we are proud to celebrate the groundbreaking and tenacious work of this year’s TLOY finalists,” said Chief Executive Officer of Public Justice Sharon McGowan. “From addressing climate change and environmental carcinogens, to protecting consumers from chemical-contaminated water, these cases exemplify the courage of the plaintiffs’ trial bar, which takes on powerful interests in pursuit of justice and accountability. With the government agencies charged with protecting workers, consumers, our environment and our civil rights being dismantled before our eyes, the work of these attorneys – and of the plaintiffs’ trial bar as a whole — should be a source of pride and hope for all of us.”

Below are the case profiles for the 2025 finalists:

Held v. State of Montana:

Known as the first constitutional climate change case ever to go to trial, this case secured a historic ruling from the Montana Supreme Court striking down as unconstitutional a state law that forced government agencies to ignore greenhouse gas emissions when approving fossil fuel projects, and declaring a fundamental right to a stable climate system.

A group of environmental and constitutional lawyers filed a lawsuit in 2020 on behalf of 16 children alleging that that Montana’s past and present approval of fossil fuel projects, and specific provisions of Montana’s Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) that prohibited state agencies from considering climate change when considering approval of fossil fuel projects, violated Montana youths’ rights to a clean and healthful environment, individual dignity, health, safety, and equal protection of the law under the Montana Constitution. While Montana is not a populous state, the state has one of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

In the first lawsuit of its kind to go to trial, the group of children — from the ages of two to 18 whose stories represent all youth in Montana — secured a powerful Montana Supreme Court opinion holding that provisions of MEPA violated their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment” because the statute forbade consideration of climate change impacts in the State’s environmental impact studies. The Held victory sets the stage for science-based action on climate change in Montana, and provides a roadmap to hold other governments accountable for their actions that exacerbate climate change and harm youth.

Legal team: Nate Bellinger, Julia Olson, and Mat dos Santos of Our Children’s Trust; Phil Gregory of Gregory Law Group; Barbara Chillcott and Melissa Hornbein of Western Environmental Law Center; and Roger Sullivan of McGarvey Law.

In re Red Dust Claims:

This twenty-seven-year battle against alumina refinery plant for negligent storage of red mud piles containing carcinogen — a byproduct of the refining process — resulted in significant recoveries for low-income St. Croix residents affected by a hurricane which blew toxic red dust on to their properties.

This case was part of a 27-year struggle to hold accountable the multinational aluminum manufacturer Alcoa Corporation for its negligent storage of bauxite and bauxite-containing red mud piles, resulting in red dust coating historically poor neighborhoods, and causing severe personal injuries and property damage. After class certification, class de-certification, multiple Third Circuit appeals, refiling of close to 3,000 individual lawsuits, thousands of depositions, and preparation for trial, the case settled for a substantial, though confidential, amount, resulting in significant recoveries for all the plaintiffs.

This marathon of a litigation was undertaken to correct wrongs of placing a known pollutant in a historically poor and underserved neighborhood of public- and lower-income housing populated by people who had come to St. Croix in search of a better life. Alcoa knowingly allowed the red dust to spread to harm more than 6,000 people.

Legal team: Lee J. Rohn and Rhea R. Lawrence of Lee J. Rohn & Associates, LLC; and Rick Yelton and Jayde Encalade of Burns Charest LLP.

Wren v. Affinitylifestyles.com Inc. and Brown v. Affinitylifestyles.com Inc.:

These product liability and consumer protection lawsuits secured an unprecedented $8.3 billion in combined verdicts against a bottled water company that poisoned consumers with a rocket fuel chemical.

Affinitylifestyles.com Inc., a company based in Las Vegas and doing business as Real Water, marketed its bottled water as “the healthiest drinking water available.” But the water contained hydrazine — a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel — causing over 100 people to suffer acute liver failure. Among the victims were at least six children, and two adult victims required liver transplants.

First filed in 2021, the lawsuits on behalf of 13 victims proceeded under theories of strict product liability for design defect, manufacturing defect, and failure to warn, alongside claims of negligence and breach of warranty. After the defendant’s insurance carriers made settlement offers characterized by one judge as “shockingly low,” the legal team was forced to prepare and execute two separate trials before two separate judges — the 14-day Wren trial and the 12-day Brown trial — ultimately securing the largest verdicts in Nevada history and setting industry-wide testing standards for manufacturers. The Wren verdict for eight victims totaled $104,676,944.05 in compensatory damages plus $3 billion in punitive damages, while the Brown verdict for 15 victims reached $269,287,678.60 in compensatory damages with an additional $5 billion in punitive damages.

Additionally, the verdicts established groundbreaking product liability standards requiring food and beverage manufacturers to properly test products before sale, set new punitive damages standards, and transformed consumer protection law.

Legal team: Will Kemp, Eric M. Pepperman, and Breanna K. Switzler of Kemp Jones, LLP; and Theodore Parker, III of Parker, Nelson & Associates.

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Public Justice takes on the most significant systemic threats to justice of our time —abusive corporate power and predatory practices, the assault on civil rights and liberties, and the destruction of the earth’s sustainability. We link high-impact litigation with strategic communications and the strength of our partnerships to combat these abusive and discriminatory systems and achieve social and economic justice. For more information, visit www.publicjustice.net.

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