Joe Melugin

John Eddie Williams, Jr. served as one of five private attorneys retained by the State of Texas to sue the major tobacco companies, producing a $15.3 billion settlement in January 1998, the largest single-case settlement in U.S. history at the time.

A St. Louis jury awarded $46.5 million to three plaintiffs who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after PCB exposure, delivering the first plaintiff verdict of its kind against Monsanto in the city.

A St. Louis jury returned a $38 million verdict against Abbott Laboratories for failing to adequately warn patients and physicians that Depakote, taken during pregnancy to control epilepsy, could cause severe birth defects including spina bifida.

A federal jury in East St. Louis found in June 2017 that Abbott Laboratories failed to warn a prescribing doctor about the risk of severe birth defects from Depakote. It awarded $15 million in compensatory damages to a 10-year-old boy born with spina bifida after his mother took the drug during pregnancy. The jury declined to award punitive damages.

Jim Hart won a $12.45 million jury verdict for a Houston couple severely injured when a New Prime tractor-trailer rear-ended their sedan on I-45, though the Texas Supreme Court later reversed on procedural grounds and remanded for a new trial.