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2006 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award Finalists Announced
Finalists Show How Trial Lawyers Work Together for the Public Good
Trial Lawyer of the Year
Award finalists will be honored at TLPJ's Gala and Awards
Dinner in Seattle's Museum of Flight on Tuesday, July 18. |
The TLPJ Foundation has named the attorneys who
worked on seven outstanding cases as finalists for its 2006 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 18, 2006, at The TLPJ Foundation’s 24th Anniversary Gala and Awards Dinner
at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.
"These impressive cases show how dedicated trial attorneys can take on even
the most powerful and established institutions on behalf or wronged groups and
individuals," said TLPJ Foundation President Thomas M. Dempsey of The Law
Offices of Thomas M. Dempsey in Los Angeles.
The finalists – 38 lawyers in seven cases – were nominated for their work in
cases addressing a range of issues, including fighting for water contamination
victims, providing healthcare for low-income children, holding the U.S.
accountable for Holocaust-Era looting, protecting homeowners from radiation
hazards, blowing the whistle on war profiteering, cleaning up lead paint
contamination, and preserving constitutional rights post-September 11th.
This year’s finalists are listed alphabetically below.
Fighting a marathon legal battle that spanned two decades and involved
three lawsuits, two trials, and three sets of appeals, Frederick M. Baron,
Thomas Sims, Renée Melancon, Janice Robinson Pennington,
Misty A. Farris, and Steve Baughman Jensen of Baron & Budd, P.C.,
in Dallas, Jane N. Saginaw, formerly of Baron & Budd,
P.C., and Richard Gonzales of the Gonzales Law Firm in Tucson won a
total recovery of more than $150 million for 1,618 low-income residents of
South Tucson whose drinking water was contaminated by the cancer-causing
chemical trichloroethylene (TCE). Once they settled the two underlying toxic
tort cases (Valenzuela v. Hughes Aircraft Company and Gerardo v.
Tucson Airport Authority), the tenacious trial attorneys tangled with
three insurance companies for 17 years in Associated Aviation
Underwriters v. Wood, until the poisoned residents got the full
compensation they deserved.
As a result of a model partnership between public interest lawyers and a
private law firm working pro bono, Illinois’ Medicaid system is being
dramatically revamped to better serve all children. After a 13-year campaign
on behalf of 600,000 low-income children in Cook County, Chicago lawyers
Frederick H. Cohen and David J. Chizewer of Goldberg Kohn Bell
Black Rosenbloom & Moritz Ltd, John M. Bouman of the Sargent Shriver
National Center on Poverty Law, and Stephanie Altman and Thomas
Yates of Health & Disability Advocates achieved a ground-breaking
settlement in Memisovski v. Maram that requires the state to provide
children on Medicaid with the same access to health care enjoyed by
privately insured children. The case was the broadest challenge to date
against any state for the administration of its Medicaid program. From now
on, Illinois’ Medicaid program will provide an additional $45 million per
year in services to poor children.
Jonathan W. Cuneo and David W. Stanley of Cuneo Gilbert &
LaDuca, LLP, in Washington, D.C., Steve W. Berman and R. Brent
Walton of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP in Seattle, and Samuel J.
Dubbin of Dubbin & Kravetz, LLP, in Miami, Florida, unearthed the hidden
history of the Nazi-era Hungarian Gold Train and fought for four-and-a-half
years to wrest an unprecedented apology to Holocaust survivors from the U.S.
government, plus a first-of-its-kind $25.5 million class action settlement
in Rosner v. United States. On September 30, 2005, the United States
issued a long-overdue apology for wrongdoing in a case that the federal
judge described as "a historic moment," that culminated in "a remarkable
settlement far beyond the range of possible recovery."
After a grueling, 16-year class action battle that culminated in a
four-month trial, Merrill G. Davidoff, Peter B. Nordberg,
and David F. Sorensen of Philadelphia’s Berger & Montague, P.C.,
won a stunning jury verdict that awarded nearly $177 million in compensatory
damages and more than $200 million in punitive damages to 13,000 Colorado
homeowners whose property values had plummeted due to radioactive
contamination from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The verdict in
Cook v. Rockwell International Corporation represents the first and only
time in which class claims have been certified and tried for lost property
values because of a continuing nuisance and trespass.
Alan M. Grayson, Victor A. Kubli, and Melissa A. Roover of
Grayson & Kubli, PC, in McLean, Virginia, and Bernard J. DiMuro of
DiMuro Ginsberg PC in Alexandria, Virginia, won the first known civil case
charging fraud by a government contractor in Iraq. (The Bush administration
is keeping under seal all other cases alleging contractor fraud in Iraq.)
The jury in United States ex rel. Isakson v. Custer Battles awarded
the maximum amount of damages permitted by the judge: $9 million for the
U.S. Treasury. It also awarded $407,000 in civil penalties and $220,000 in
damages to Custer Battles employees who blew the whistle on the federal
contractor’s war profiteering. The verdict is the largest ever in a whistle
blower case in which the federal government declined to participate.
In a stunning victory that sent shockwaves through the paint industry,
John J. McConnell, Fidelma L. Fitzpatrick, and Robert J.
McConnell of Providence, Rhode Island’s, Motley Rice LLC, and Neil T.
Leifer of Boston’s Thornton & Naumes LLP, together with Rhode Island
Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch and Assistant Attorney General
Neil F. X. Kelly, won the first-ever jury verdict holding lead paint
manufacturers accountable for creating a public nuisance and requiring the
companies to clean up their mess. As a result of the victory in State of
Rhode Island v. Lead Industries Association, three major paint
manufacturers – Sherwin Williams Company, Millennium Holdings LLC, and NL
Industries, Inc. – will probably have to spend $1.7 to $3.5 billion to
remove lead paint from Rhode Island homes. A fourth defendant, DuPont
Corporation, settled before trial, agreeing to donate $12.5 million to
nonprofit lead paint abatement programs.
Our fundamental Constitutional rights to due process and equal
protection were reaffirmed, and the U.S. government was held accountable for
its shocking abuse of an Egyptian immigrant, thanks to the dedication and
persistence of New York trial attorneys Haeyoung Yoon of the Urban
Justice Center, Alexander A. Reinert, Joan Magoolaghan,
Elizabeth Koob, and Keith Donoghue of Koob and Magoolaghan, and
David Jackson Ball, Jr., and Mamoni Bhattacharyya of Weil,
Gotshal & Manges LLP. The attorneys in Elmaghraby v. Ashcroft
achieved a precedent-setting $300,000 settlement for Elmaghraby – the first
settlement by the government for its indiscriminate, sweeping arrests of
Arab and South Asian Muslim immigrants in the wake of 9/11. It is also the
government’s first settlement of claims for physical abuse and harsh
conditions asserted by immigrants detained on the suspicion of terrorism.
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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 3,500 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, DC, with a West Coast office in Oakland,
California. The TLPJ web site address is www.tlpj.org. | |
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