Sunnyside, Arizona,
children had far higher cancer rates due to TCE
water contamination. |
Seven Dallas lawyers
and a Tucson lawyer received the
2006 Trial Lawyer of the
Year Award from The Trial Lawyers for Public
Justice (TLPJ) Foundation last night for winning a
marathon legal battle for Tucson water contamination
victims that spanned two decades and involved three
lawsuits, two trials, and three sets of appeals. The
award – the nation’s single most prestigious honor for
trial lawyers – is bestowed annually upon the lawyers
who made the greatest contribution to the public
interest by trying or settling a precedent-setting case.
The award was presented
at The TLPJ Foundation’s 24th Anniversary
Gala and Awards Dinner in Seattle to Dallas attorneys
Frederick M. Baron,
Thomas Sims,
Renée Melancon,
Janice Robinson Pennington,
Steve Baughman Jensen,
and Misty A. Farris
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.
“The attorneys in this
case exemplify the dedication and commitment of trial
lawyers to fight for injury victims until justice is
done,” said TLPJ Foundation President Thomas M. Dempsey
of The Law Offices of Thomas M. Dempsey in Los Angeles.
The attorneys won a
total recovery of more than $150 million for 1,618 water
contamination victims in Sunnyside, Arizona, a
blue-collar neighborhood near the Tucson airport where
Hughes Aircraft Company had been dumping toxic
trichloroethylene (TCE) for nearly 30 years. Sunnyside
residents – particularly children – had far higher
cancer rates than residents of Arizona neighborhoods
with clean drinking water. Baron, who led the trial team
in its toxic tort and related insurance coverage
actions, and Gonzales, who grew up in Sunnyside and
served as local counsel from start to finish, personify
the word “tenacity.” Once the underlying toxic tort
cases (Valenzuela v.
Hughes Aircraft Company and
Gerardo v. Tucson
Airport Authority) were settled, the team of
trial attorneys tangled with the city’s and the
airport’s three insurance companies for 17 years in
Associated Aviation
Underwriters v. Wood, until the poisoned
residents got the compensation they deserved.
Beyond the enormous
recovery for the injury victims, this legal saga set
important precedents. For example, Arizona law now
applies a “continuous trigger” for insurance coverage,
meaning that liability policies are triggered for toxic
injury claims beginning at the time of the exposure and
continuing until the time of diagnosis of the clinical
disease, which may be decades later. In addition, this
case clarified that, under Arizona law, an insurer may
not re-litigate issues that were necessary to the
underlying tort
judgment.
The
Champion of Justice
Award was also presented to two former TLPJ
Foundation Presidents:
Jeffrey P. Foote of Foote Webster, P.C., in
Portland, Oregon; and
Michael E. Withey
of Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Withey Coluccio in
Seattle. The Champion of Justice Award – TLPJ’s Highest
Honor – is presented periodically to individuals who
have rendered extraordinary service to the organization
or the cause of justice.
The other finalists for
the 2006 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award, also honored at
the gala are described below.
•
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.
•
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.
•
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 in
Cook v. Rockwell
International Corporation 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.
•
Alan
M. Grayson, Victor A. Kubli,
and Melissa A. Roover
of Grayson & Kubli, PC, in McLean, Virginia, and
Bernard J. DiMuro
of DiMuro Ginsberg, P.C. 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.
•
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 will probably have to spend $1.7 to
$3.5 billion to remove lead paint from Rhode Island
homes.
•
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.
###
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.
