Sometimes our quest for justice has not ended merely with the successful resolution of the lawsuit but has continued long afterwards in an attempt to prevent similar harm to others.
We believe, at Wisner Baum, that being a safety advocate is very much a part of our firm’s purpose. Efforts have been made by the firm’s attorneys not only to represent their clients in getting them full and just compensation, but also to become advocates for improving safety in aviation, commercial trucking, rail passenger safety, structure integrity, and prescription drug safety, among others.
Many of our firm’s attorneys have spearheaded, and participated in, campaigns that have led to safety improvements. Wisner Baum attorneys have testified on at least eight occasions at state and federal levels regarding commercial transportation, building and drug safety and to a foreign government who invited a Wisner Baum attorney to their country to testify about the risks of a certain U.S. manufactured medication which severely affected their people.
The California State Assembly’s Committee on Commuter Rail Safety invited Paul Hedlund, attorney and mechanical engineer, to testify about how to improve passenger train safety in the wake of the January 2005 Metrolink derailment in Southern California. Mr. Hedlund played two test crash films created by the federal government in order to show improved crashworthiness for passenger cars. He also discussed push vs pull. “Pulling trains with locomotives is not a magic bullet. . . but it is hard to imagine that there would have been any deaths and injuries on Jan. 26 had the train been pulled,” The Los Angeles Times quoted Paul Hedlund.
Several Wisner Baum staff and clients attended three different antidepressant safety hearings held by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Wisner Baum and several clients testified at each hearing about the risk of suicide in children and adults taking SSRI-antidepressants. Two hearings were held in 2004 by the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs and Pediatric Advisory Committees about the risk of suicide in children and adolescents taking antidepressants. After examining data from the clinical trials of antidepressants, the FDA concluded that the risk does, indeed, exist. Shortly thereafter, the FDA ordered manufacturers of more than thirty antidepressants to include a black box warning (the most severe warning) on their label stating that the drugs increase the risk of suicidal behavior in children and adolescents. The FDA also required that Patient Medication Guides be distributed to patients prescribed the drugs. Our firm and our clients testified a third time, in 2006, before the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee about the risk of suicide in adults. Testimony and evidence presented at this hearing resulted in the expansion of the black box warnings to young adults. We are doing what we can to ensure the suicide warning applies to everyone, regardless of age.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Health urged Michael Baum to present evidence of fraud to their hemophilia community. After reading a quote by Michael Baum in the New York Times, Taiwan’s Ministry of Health invited him to their country for an urgent meeting. Officials wanted to see Wisner Baum’s smoking gun documents showing that the U.S. manufacturers of hemophilia medication were, in fact, committing a fraud on Taiwan by knowingly urging doctors to prescribe HIV contaminated medication to their hemophilia community.
Wisner Baum accepted an invitation from Senator Tom Torlakson to testify at the joint informational hearing of the California State Senate Health and Human Services Committee and the Statewide Task Force on Youth about suicide and antidepressant medications. Senator Torlakson’s niece committed suicide after taking an antidepressant. The purpose of the hearing was to review the possible connection between suicide and antidepressant drugs.
Wisner Baum assisted Congressional Investigators from two separate Committee investigations looking into the safety of antidepressants. Two Congressional hearings were later held at which pharmaceutical executives and FDA officials were interrogated about their failure to protect the public health related to antidepressants and their association with suicidality.
Other continuing safety efforts have included arranging for one of our clients and Paul Hedlund to testify before the California State Legislature regarding seismic safety after the death of our client’s son due to the collapse of a building known to be vulnerable to tremors during an earthquake.
On behalf of truck safety, at the request of a California State Senator, a Wisner Baum attorney testified at a special California State Senate Transportation Committee hearing to probe events leading to a fatal trucking accident which killed our clients’ son. The Committee was investigating the safety concerns regarding Caltrans, a state agency, issuing a permit to truck company, to carry a load two inches higher than the overpass under which it would be traveling. When the truck began to travel under the overpass the large tank it was carrying was ripped from the truck as it struck the bottom of the overpass, knocking it down on top of the car traveling behind it, killing the car’s driver.
After we tried the last of the cases against Ford Motor Company arising out of the deaths of 24 children in Carrollton, Kentucky, we mailed packets of information about fuel tank placement to bus manufacturers, regulatory agencies and school transportation officials in all 50 states and Canada. We urged them to relocate the gas tanks to an unexposed position inside the frame.
Our firm arranged for our clients to participate in the recall campaign of defective drain covers in spas, hot tubs and whirlpool bathtubs after their daughter’s hair was caught in a drain causing her to drown. The manufacturer of the drain cover recalled 206,000 of the 6-inch plastic disks.
Once the legislation was passed in the form of the Ricky Ray Act, Wisner Baum staff helped secure lobbying support which led to full funding for the act shortly thereafter. This financial assistance helped families who had been emotionally and economically devastated by the impact of AIDS on their lives
We also helped advance the long term effort to amend an unjust 80-year-old federal law, the “Death on the High Seas Act.” We asked all of our clients from the TWA 800, SwissAir 111 and EgyptAir 990 tragedies who were affected by this law to participate in a campaign, which we organized, to write Congress urging them to pass corrective legislation. Congress did so and the new law now provides more equitable treatment for families of passengers involved in international aviation disasters.
In May of 2019, the jury in the case of Pilliod et al. v, Monsanto Company ordered the agrochemical giant to pay $2.055 billion in damages to the plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a Bay Area couple in their 70s. R. Brent Wisner served as co-lead trial attorney for the Pilliods, delivering the opening and closing statements and cross-examining several of Monsanto’s experts. Wisner Baum managing shareholder, Michael Baum and attorney Pedram Esfandiary also served on the trial team in the Pilliod case.
The judge later reduced their award to $87M. Monsanto appealed the Pilliod’s verdict which the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District denied on August 9, 2021. Monsanto then requested the California Supreme Court review the appeal’s court decision, which the court denied on Nov. 17, 2021. Monsanto (Bayer) then submitted a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court which SCOTUS denied on June 27, 2022, allowing the final judgment of $87M to remain intact.
$289.2 million jury verdict in Monsanto Roundup trial
Wisner Baum co-represented Dewayne “Lee” Johnson in the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. On Aug. 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $39.25 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages to Mr. Johnson, a former groundskeeper who alleged exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides caused him to develop terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Months after the jury verdict, the judge overseeing the trial reduced the punitive damages to $39.25 million. Mr. Johnson decided to accept the remittitur, bringing the adjusted amount awarded to Mr. Johnson $78.5 million.
Monsanto (Bayer) appealed the verdict and Johnson cross appealed. On July 20, 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict against Monsanto but reduced Mr. Johnson’s award to $20.5 million. The company chose not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the litigation.
In 2016, Wisner Baum attorney Timothy A. Loranger and six other attorneys in the Plaintiffs’ Management Committee were able to secure a $265 million settlement for victims of the 2015 Amtrak 188 derailment in Philadelphia, one of the largest in the U.S. for 2016.
