Founders

Founding the nonprofit legal organization that became Trial Lawyers for Public Justice(TLPJ) in the early 1980s involved lawyers, law firms and others attracted to consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s vision of a national public interest law firm. Early founders and donors included famous trial attorneys such as Melvin Belli, Gerry Spence and Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, destined-to-be judges such as Susan Illston and Morris (Moe) Sandstead Jr., former military veterans turned-trial attorneys such as Georgia’s high profile Bobby Lee Cook and Washington’s Daniel F. Sullivan, and social justice and civil rights attorney-advocates such as Connecticut’s Ted Koskoff and Michigan’s Alice B. Jennings. (Below is an alphabetized list of 347 early founders and donors.)

Among those listed are several founders who became TLPJ presidents, including J.D. Lee, who was instrumental in launching the organization. The Tennessee farm boy joined the Army at age 17 to fight in World War II and used to G.I. Bill to go to college and law school. In private practice, he represented people injured or killed as a result of the negligence of others – including filing pioneering lawsuits in the 1960s on behalf of cigarette smokers who sued Big Tobacco companies. He became renowned for winning “record-setting verdicts” in medical malpractice and product liability cases.

By 1980, Lee had already been president of the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association and president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). At the 1981 ATLA Convention in San Francisco, a group of about 60 lawyers that included Lee, Joe Cotchett, Bob Cartwright, Dean Robb, Bill Trine, Bob Habush and Joan Claybrook got serious about forming a public interest firm to fight the dark new Reagan Administration. By the end of 1981, having raised $200,000 (helped by a $150,000 foundation gift from environmentalist Mike McIntosh), the group used Lee’s Tennessee nonprofit as an anchor for incorporation on January 31, 1982. The following month in Washington DC, the founders held their first organizational dinner meeting, picked a Board of Directors and elected J.D. Lee as their first President (1981-1982).

The complete list of Past Presidents is on the Public Justice Board of Directors webpage.

Not on that list, however, is Larry Trattler, 54, TLPJ Foundation Vice President from Denver, Colorado who died December 28, 2001 after a sudden heart attack days earlier. Trattler had been on the TLPJ Board since 1993, serving on the Executive Committee since 1996. “Larry was not only an outstanding lawyer, but a warm and generous person who dedicated his life and his career to helping others,” said TLPJ Foundation President Susan Vogel Saladoff.

Click here to see a 2008-2009 list of Public Justice Foundation Board of Directors, Board Members, Honoary Board Members, Past Presidents, The TLPJ Foundation, and a list of staff from both the National Headquarters in Washington D.C. and the West