Trial Counsel

We try civil cases for businesses. Since 2000, most of our trials have turned on a scientific question: whether the evidence supports the claim that a product caused the plaintiff’s injury. Most of the rest have been commercial disputes.

Ray Harris and Cary Schachter began trying cases for Garlock in 2000 and continued for a decade. The defense they presented was that low-dose chrysotile exposure was an unlikely cause of mesothelioma. Plaintiffs then began alleging exposure from the few Garlock products made with crocidolite, an amphibole more potent than chrysotile. By the second half of the decade most of our trials included a crocidolite claim. The Garlock trials took us across Texas — Austin, Beaumont, Brazoria County, Brownsville, Cass County, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Greenville, and Houston — and to Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Louisville, New York City, Pittsburgh, Schenectady, and Tampa.

Laurie Fay joined the practice in 1999 and was our only associate when the trials began. She tried cases with Ray and Cary, and she trained the associates who followed her. Erin Therrian joined in 2011, as we began preparing for the Garlock estimation trial. She has since deposed most of the experts the plaintiffs have offered in the asbestos litigation. Both are partners, both worked on the Garlock estimation, and both are working on the Bestwall estimation.

We were Garlock’s trial counsel. From the first trial our work centered on the expert evidence. The Garlock estimation asked the same causation question about an entire inventory of mesothelioma claims. A trial calls mostly on what a lawyer already knows. There is little time to add to that. Our experts taught us the literature, and over that decade we learned it case by case. The Garlock estimation proceeding was different. We had time to study the science and find better ways to present it. Georgia-Pacific engaged us as expert evidence counsel for its asbestos docket from 2014 to 2017. We have continued since 2017 as special litigation counsel to its affiliate Bestwall, on the science in its estimation proceeding.

Whether we are trying a tort case or estimating a liability, the work is the same: medical and scientific experts, the studies each opinion rests on, and whether the reasoning carries from the studies to the opinion.