Cristen Bartus
About Cristen Bartus
Cristen Bartus is a Partner at the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin, leading the firm's settlement administration team. She has more than 13 years of experience and joined the firm in 2012. In her current role, she liaises with health insurance providers and oversees settlement distribution.
Bartus earned her Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Toledo College of Business in 2004 and her Juris Doctor from the University of Toledo College of Law in 2009. During law school, she completed the Janet D. Steiger Fellowship at the Alaska Attorney General's Office.
She is admitted to the North Carolina Bar and is a member of North Carolina Advocates for Justice.
Notable work includes leading a team of attorneys and paralegals on the major civil rights class action case that resulted in the $1.25 billion settlement for 15,700 Black farmers discriminated against by the USDA. She has performed pro bono work with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and volunteered with Durham Congregations in Action YO: Durham. She is based in Durham, North Carolina.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Law Offices of James Scott Farrin
These results are credited to Law Offices of James Scott Farrin. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Farrin co-lead counsel Gary Jackson won an $8 million class settlement for roughly 6,500 residents forced from their homes by the 2022 ammonium nitrate fire at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant, with a separate $4.5 million for affected businesses.
A Johnston County jury awarded $5.1 million to the family of Joan Drake, killed when a driver going 98 mph struck her car as she turned into a Clayton Walmart, after Farrin attorneys Coleman Cowan and Donald Clack tried the case without putting on a single medical bill.
A mother and her two teenage daughters were seriously hurt in an October 2018 head-on crash on North Carolina Highway 49 with a company truck driven by an unlicensed man. After the injury claims were resolved by agreement, a federal court held that the construction company's commercial excess policy covered the accident and that interest was owed on top. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in August 2025, and the family's total recovery reached $2,861,458.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
