At some point, we'll get tired of Googling things. But not yet. Part-owners Cary Patterson and John Eddie Williams made a ton of money suing tobacco companies.
Thanks to Forbes, we see this, on John Eddie Williams:
A member of the team of Texas tobacco lawyers, Williams, 46, also represented the family of a man killed in a Phillips Petroleum plant explosion and last year won a $117 million verdict. Aside from his firm's annual take of the tobacco fees (19% of Texas' $3.3 billion fee award), Williams recovered more than $150 million in asbestos litigation last year. Raised in a union family-his father and grandfather were both longshoremen-he's a staunch Democrat; he gave $1.6 million to candidates in the last election.
And Cary Patterson (while talking about his equal partner, and not in that sense, Harold Nix:
Five years ago Nix pocketed $27 million from companies he alleged infected 3,300 Texas factory workers with "chemical AIDS." The cases petered out in time for Nix, 62, to take on tobacco, bolstering a liability and negligence legal franchise in the plaintiff-friendly east Texas town of Daingerfield. Nix's firm, Nix Patterson & Roach, contributed $850,000 to Democratic candidates last year. He and equal partner Cary Patterson shared 80% of $20 million more in nontobacco fees last year.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
