WSBC Attorneys Receive Public Justice Foundation Award

August 2009

WSBC attorneys Louise Roselle and Jean Geoppinger were among 10 attorneys from Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Denver who were named co-winners of the Public Justice Foundation's 2009 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. They were cited for their work in Cook v. Rockwell International Corp,. in which the operators of Colorado's Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant were held accountable for persistent radioactive contamination from the facility. They shared honors with a team of five New York attorneys who recovered damages for the families of the victims in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, a case in which WSBC attorneys Stan Chesley, Fay Stilz, Bob Steinberg, and Jean Geoppinger also participated.  

The winners were chosen from a field of 20 nominated cases, five of which were chosen as finalists. The finalists were feted at the Public Justice Foundation's Annual Gala and Awards Dinner, where the winners were named on July 28, 2009. In the Cook case, 13,000 property owners near Rock Flats outside Denver, Colorado, were awarded $926 million as a result of radioactive contamination from the plant. The jury verdict against Dow Chemical Company and Rockwell International was the first to impose punitive damages on a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons contractor. The attorneys in the Pan Am 103 case recovered more than $500 million from the airline's insurers and $2.7 billion from the Libyan government for the victim's families. The litigation marked the first and only time that a nation designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism" admitted its role in a terrorist attack and paid compensation to the victims' families.  

The Public Justice Foundation bestows the award on lawyers who won or settled socially significant cases.