The TLPJ Foundation has named the attorneys who worked on eight outstanding cases as finalists for its 2003 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. The nationally prestigious 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. The winner will be announced on July 22, 2003, at The TLPJ Foundation’s 21^st Annual Awards Dinner and Party at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

"These exceptional attorneys exemplify how trial lawyers use their skills and determination to create a more just society," said TLPJ Foundation President Paul Stritmatter of Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Withey Coluccio in Hoquiam, Washington.

The finalists – 41 lawyers in eight cases – were nominated for their committed work in cases addressing a broad range of social issues, including exposing government misconduct, protecting access to health care, safeguarding our civil rights, holding insurers and HMOs accountable, fighting for workers’ rights, holding corporations accountable, and battling Big Tobacco. This year’s finalists are listed alphabetically below.

• Solo practitioners Dennis Cunningham, J. Tony Serra, Robert Bloom, and Ben Rosenfeld of San Francisco, and William M. 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, took on federal and state law enforcement power in a classic David and Goliath battle, 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. 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.
  
  
• David H. Dunaway of the Law Offices of David H. Dunaway & Associates in LaFollette, Tennessee fought for three years to win – and successfully defend on appeal – a case that safeguards indigent families’ access to health care in rural East Tennessee. The City of LaFollette had tried to use $9.2 million that it received from the sale of a hospital for a variety of purposes, none of which involved health care. Dunaway stopped the City’s plan dead in its tracks, winning a ruling from the Tennessee Court of Appeals in February 2003 that requires the City to leave the $9.2 million in a constructive trust to support community health care. 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 in Fort Worth, Texas, 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 plaintiffs’ legal team represented the family of 83-year-old heart patient Herschel Pybas, who charged that HMO officials pushed Pybas out of a medical care facility to his home, despite the fact that he needed 24-hour skilled care. The verdict in Pybas v. Cigna Healthcare of Texas marked the first time that plaintiffs won a case tried under the section of the state’s 1997 Health Care Liability Act that allows injured patients to sue a health maintenance organization (HMO) for medical malpractice. The precedent-setting verdict sends a message to HMOs that they will be held accountable for placing profits over patient safety.
  
  
• 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 legal 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. Employing its "practice of retribution" – called "fair game" by Scientology – the Church targeted Wollersheim after he defected from the organization, coercing him to continue participating in Scientology by means of kidnaping and brainwashing. 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 R. 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. In June 2002, the court approved a settlement in which the City agreed to forgive all fines and costs owed by class members in "time to pay" cases, provide cash payments to class members, expunge their arrest records, and pay attorneys’ fees. The National Judicial College uses Reinschmiedt v. City of Wichita to teach new judges the dangers of converting monetary sentences into jail time.
  
  
• Michael Rubin of Altshuler Berzon Nussbaum Rubin & Demain 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, Alan M. Caplan of Bushnell, Caplan & Fielding LLP in San Francisco, and L. Thomas Galloway of Galloway & Associates in Boulder, Colorado reformed 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 in March 2003 on behalf of approximately 30,000 garment workers. As part of the settlement, 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. The plaintiffs’ lawyers devoted 70,000 hours to these three cases (Does I v. The Gap, Inc., Does I v. Advance Textile Corp., and Union of Needletrades Industrial Textile Employees v. The Gap, Inc.) over a four-year period. Milberg Weiss waived all of its legal fees (approximately $16 million) and much of its expenses, and many other plaintiffs’ firms waived all or a substantial portion of their fees and expenses. Their determined and innovative efforts set new standards for fighting to protect workers’ rights.
  
  
• 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. The landmark consumer fraud judgment in Price v. Philip Morris USA, achieved in March 2003, was the first to hold a tobacco company accountable for the deceptive labeling of "light" cigarettes. Within weeks of the verdict, defendant Philip Morris USA declared that it is removing the words "Lowered Tar and Nicotine" from packages of Marlboro Lights cigarettes. The ruling paves the way for new lines of attack against the tobacco industry as a whole. Stephen A. Sheller of Sheller, Ludwig & Badey P.C. in Philadelphia is also named as a finalist in this case for discovering the light cigarette fraud and initiating the litigation strategy to remedy the deception.
  
  
• D. Frank Winkles and Claude H. Tison, Jr. 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. The factual record developed by the plaintiff’s attorneys provided an evidentiary trove for many nationwide cases that followed, helping others win substantial verdicts against UNUM Provident, the parent company of Paul Revere and the largest disability insurance company in the world. This case, highlighted by CBS’s "60 Minutes," stands as an example of how tenacious trial lawyers can force corporate giants to change their practices by making them pay for their wrongdoing.