About Us
Baron & Budd is one of the largest and oldest plaintiffs’ law firms in the nation. Our mission of “Protecting What’s Right” spans the protection of people in virtually every aspect of their lives.
Baron & Budd has been leading the opioid litigation against distributors, manufacturers, and retailers. Our firm filed the first lawsuit against a distributor and started the opioid multidistrict litigation (MDL). We now represent over 750 local governments and 9 state attorneys general. Baron & Budd attorneys were instrumental in obtaining the landmark $26 billion national opioid settlement. This settlement is designed to resolve opioid claims brought by states, counties, cities, and other local governments against the “Big Three” drug distributors, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, along with the drug manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson.
Russell Budd
Russell W. Budd, a mainstay of the plaintiff’s bar with more than forty-five years’ experience representing victims of corporate wrongdoing, has been a trailblazer for the entirety of his career. Serving as a Baron & Budd shareholder since 1985 and president and managing shareholder since 2002, Mr. Budd presides over one of the nation’s largest plaintiffs’ firms. Founded in 1977, Baron & Budd has nearly 200 full-time employees and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with offices in Los Angeles, California; San Diego, California; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Washington, D.C.
Baron & Budd has achieved substantial national acclaim for its work on cutting-edge litigation, trying hundreds of cases to verdict and settling tens of thousands of cases for hundreds of billions of dollars in areas of litigation as diverse as pharmaceuticals and defective medical devices, asbestos and mesothelioma, water contamination, fraudulent banking practices, motor vehicles, employment, and other consumer fraud issues. Mr. Budd’s leadership among plaintiff’s attorneys is unrivaled. Over the past four and a half decades, he has played a major role in many of the largest cases ever to be litigated in the United States court system.
Since the 1980s, Russell Budd has successfully protected the interests of asbestos victims across the country. He was appointed by United States Trustees in the early 2000s to serve on the creditors’ committees of numerous asbestos manufacturer bankruptcies where he represented and advocated on behalf of individuals harmed by the debtors’ asbestos-containing products. Working in that role, Mr. Budd was instrumental in reaching settlements to fund and establish asbestos trust funds to protect present and future asbestos victims. Mr. Budd’s efforts as a chief negotiator in the Halliburton bankruptcy resulted in a $4 billion national settlement and created the largest asbestos trust fund of its kind anywhere in the world. Additionally, Mr. Budd helped negotiate a $3.9 billion settlement with United States Gypsum to benefit asbestos claimants and a nearly $3 billion cash and stock equity settlement with W.R. Grace to fund an asbestos trust for asbestos claimants. Mr. Budd’s invaluable knowledge, expertise, and guidance at the inception of those bankruptcies established the foundation for the long-term successful administration of asbestos trusts.
Today, Mr. Budd sits on the Trust Advisory Committee (TAC) of the following asbestos trusts where he continues to protect the interests of injured individuals: ABB Lummus Global Inc 524(g) Asbestos PI Trust, Armstrong World Industries, Inc. Asbestos PI Settlement Trust, Babcock & Wilcox Company Asbestos PI Settlement Trust, Celotex Asbestos Settlement Trust, Combustion Engineering 524(g) Asbestos PI Trust, Federal-Mogul Asbestos Personal Injury Trust, Fuller Austin Asbestos Settlement Trust, JT Thorpe Successor Trust, NGC Bodily Injury Trust, Owens Corning/Fibreboard Asbestos Personal Injury Trust, Swan Asbestos and Silica Settlement Trust, United States Gypsum Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust, and WRG Asbestos PI Trust. Additionally, Baron & Budd shareholders also sit on the following TACs where they too advocate for asbestos victims’ interests: ASARCO, DII Industries, LLC Asbestos PI Trust, Flintkote Asbestos Trust, G-I Holdings Inc. Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust, M.H. Detrick Co. Asbestos Trust, Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, NARCO Asbestos Trust, Pittsburgh Corning Corporation, Quigley Company, Inc. Asbestos PI Trust, Rapid American Asbestos Personal Injury Liquidating Trust, Rock Wool Mfg. Co. Asbestos Trust, Rutland Fire Clay Co. Asbestos Trust, and TH Agriculture & Nutrition LLC Asbestos Personal Injury Trust. In total, Mr. Budd and other members of his firm currently serve as advisors to trustees who are responsible for more than $30 billion in asbestos trust assets. In addition to his legal work, Mr. Budd has been a tireless leader in the political arena, fighting tort reform, including proposed state and federal legislation that would harm the rights of tort victims.
Russell Budd’s landmark settlement work, however, is not limited to asbestos cases. His efforts have been instrumental in numerous other cases, spanning from the banking industry to the BP oil spill, along with his more recent work on the national opioid litigation. Mr. Budd was appointed by the Honorable Dan Aaron Polster (N.D. Ohio) to the Plaintiffs’ Settlement Negotiation Team for In re National Prescription Opiate Litigation, MDL 2804. Together with co-counsel, Russell Budd and his firm represent more than 700 public entities and eight Attorneys General across the nation in litigation against prescription opioid manufacturers, distributors and dispensers. The Settlement Negotiation Team, comprised of seven elite trial lawyers from top plaintiffs’ firms around the county, have been responsible for negotiating more than $46 billion in settlements with the nation’s largest and most prominent drug distributors, manufacturers and dispensers. The settlement funds, which began flowing to communities across America in 2022, are providing abatement and relief to states, counties, cities, and native American tribes to combat the opioid crisis.
Mr. Budd also represents the state of New Mexico in its opioid litigation. He has successfully negotiated settlements from pharmacies, distributors and manufacturers in New Mexico valued at a combined $538 million. He also supervised a seven week trial for the state in Santa Fe resulting in a confidential settlement with the last remaining pharmacy defendant, Walgreens. That settlement cannot be publicly disclosed until May 2023. “These settlements represent a significant step toward holding opioid sellers responsible for their role in creating a public health crisis that continues to plague our country,” said Mr. Budd. Nationally, Russell Budd and his colleagues on the Settlement Negotiation Team, along with state Attorneys General, continue to negotiate and mediate with remaining opioid defendants in MDL 2804.
Settlement negotiations of this scale are nothing new to Russell Budd. He was a chief negotiator for the 2012 settlement with JPMorgan Chase in In Re Checking Account Overdraft Litigation, which resulted in $110 million in cash and more than $100 million in business practice changes benefiting Chase customers. Mr. Budd was a leader in the Overdraft litigation which, in 2011, led to a $410 million settlement of with Bank of America. He was also one of the negotiators of a $177 million settlement for litigation brought on behalf of seven states’ attorneys general against GlaxoSmithKline regarding its fraudulent marketing of the diabetes drug Avandia.
Under Mr. Budd’s leadership, Baron & Budd has garnered significant national recognition for cutting-edge litigation and settlements. The firm’s Environmental Litigation group was named one of Law360’s 2020 Practice Groups of the Year for more than $1 billion in settlements with Pacific Gas & Electric for municipalities and individuals concerning wildfire damage in California, and $648 million in settlements with Bayer AG over water pollution caused by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In addition, in December of 2022, Baron & Budd’s Environmental Group received final approval in a $575.5 million class action for cities and counties against Monsanto concerning water pollution.
Mr. Budd and his wife, Dorothy, are deeply committed to their community. The Budds were instrumental in establishing the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition (DFCC) with the Dallas Mayor’s office in the early 2000s with the long term goal of working with community partners toward eradicating systemic causes of poverty in low-income communities with greater access to affordable housing and community safety. The partnership led the Budds to personally contribute funds to build 100 affordable single-family homes as part of the “Building on Faith” project, a collaborative initiative between the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition (DFCC), the City of Dallas, and Habitat for Humanity. In 2010, the DFCC partnered with the Center on Communities and Education (CCE) at Southern Methodist University in Dallas to create meaningful education collaboration with local public and charter schools located in the West Dallas area. In 2014, Mr. and Mrs. Budd donated $2.5 million to Southern Methodist University to endow The Budd Center for Involving Communities in Education, uniting the work of the DFCC and CCE in collective partnership to provide Dallas-area children the education, social and emotional tools they need to break the cycle of poverty. The Center leads a partnership of more than 30 nonprofits and 15 public, private and charter schools in Dallas. Mr. Budd continues to monitor the progress of The Budd Center as a member of the Advisory Board of the Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University.
In 2017, Mr. and Mrs. Budd endowed $3 million to the University of Texas School of Law to create The Budd Innocence Center, with the goal of improving the criminal justice system by helping prevent injustice and protecting the innocent. The Center sponsors events to highlight issues related to wrongful convictions, and as its main project, supports the education of law school students through the Actual Innocence Clinic. Clinic students and experienced faculty work together to provide legal assistance to prisoners with claims that they are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. Clinic students typically screen and investigate claims, interview witnesses, review transcripts, prepare motions and pleadings, and conduct factual and legal research.
Burton LeBlanc
Roland Tellis
Mark Pifko
Mark Pifko, a Shareholder at Baron & Budd, specializes in the prosecution of high-profile class action cases against multi-national corporations. Mr. Pifko’s cases have addressed corporate fraud and wrongdoing across a broad array of business areas, including in the financial services, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries. Since joining the Los Angeles office of Baron & Budd in 2011, Mr. Pifko’s efforts have led to the return of significant sums of money to victims and have affected changes in corporate behavior.
Since 2017, Mr. Pifko has devoted a substantial amount of time working on litigation related to the opioid crisis. Mr. Pifko is part of a team of lawyers who represent approximately 700 cities and counties and nine states in cases brought against manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers of opioid products. Mr. Pifko’s work on the opioid litigation has been featured in the non-fiction book, American Cartel and a September 13, 2019 article published in The Washington Post, titled Inside the Drug Industry’s Plan to Defeat the DEA, which discussed evidence uncovered by Mr. Pifko in connection with his deposition of the pharmaceutical distribution industry trade association known as the Healthcare Distribution Alliance. Additionally, Mr. Pifko was part of a team which, in March 2019, successfully obtained an order disqualifying an international law firm and a former U.S. Attorney from the bellwether cases brought by Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and the City of Cleveland. In 2022, Mr. Pifko was co-lead trial counsel for the New Mexico Attorney General in an eight-week trial concerning the opioid crisis where the State recovered $774 million from Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, Kroger, and Albertsons.
Jennifer Fountain Connolly
Jennifer Fountain Connolly is a Shareholder in Baron & Budd’s Washington, D.C. office and a member of the Opioid Litigation Group. She serves as lead counsel in cases brought by eight state attorneys general, is co-lead counsel in coordinated proceedings brought in Pennsylvania state court, and represents Salt Lake County, Utah, in a consolidated proceeding in Utah state court. She has more than two decades of experience leading national, complex litigation matters including antitrust, pharmaceutical and consumer fraud class actions, qui tam cases, and cases brought by state attorneys general and other governmental entities. Since working on multistate investigations as an Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Connolly has enjoyed working with parties and attorneys around the country to litigate and resolve some of the nation’s largest cases.
Charles G. Orr
Charles G. “Chip” Orr is a member of Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group. In both the MDL and state court cases, he drafts and responds to motions and is part of Baron & Budd’s “Law and Briefing” team that handles other motions and complex legal issues as requested by the trial team. Before joining Baron & Budd as a shareholder in 2019, he spent the past decade at a boutique pharmaceutical and medical device law firm, successfully litigating mass tort cases for plaintiffs from across the country. Mr. Orr has 25 years of experience working on complex cases, both for clients of large international firms and for the Texas Supreme Court and appellate courts as a staff attorney.
Catherine Hancock Dorsey
Catherine Hancock Dorsey is a senior appellate attorney and shareholder in the Washington D.C. offices of Baron & Budd and a member of the Opioid Litigation Group. She brings almost 17 years of experience at the Department of Justice to Baron & Budd’s robust opioid practice and has briefed and argued an array of complex cases in her lengthy career. At Baron & Budd, Ms. Dorsey handles , advises, and strategizes on appellate and other issues. Ms. Dorsey participates as member of the opioid MDL’s Law & Briefing Committee, which provides research, briefing, and litigation support to the Plaintiff’s Executive Committee on a broad range of legal issues that arise in the MDL. She also assists as counsel to a number of State Attorney General’s offices that are involved in opioids litigation, where she provides strategic advice and litigation support, including motions practice, memoranda of law, and appellate briefs.
Christine Mansour
William G. Powers
Sterling Cluff
Jay Lichter
Jay Lichter joined Baron & Budd’s Los Angeles office in 2018 as a member of the Firm’s Class Action Litigation Group. He knew his strong drive to fight for victim’s rights would be well-suited to Baron & Budd’s aggressive “fight for what’s right” approach to seeking justice for those harmed by financial fraud, automobile defects, deceptive food labeling, false advertising, securities fraud and environmental contamination. Mr. Lichter has been a member of the opioid litigation group since he first joined Baron & Budd. His work includes developing the claims of local and state governments across the country against various opioid distributors and dispensers. His primary focus is handling offensive discovery disputes, law and motion work, and litigation strategy involving claims against AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation and Rite Aid, at the national, state, and county level.
Michael von Klemperer
Michael von Klemperer is a shareholder in Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group in Washington, D.C. Since joining the firm in 2020, Mr. von Klemperer’s practice has focused on representing state attorneys general in litigation across the country. He currently represents nine states in their cases against opioids manufacturers, distributors and dispensers, and has taken a significant role at both the trial and appellate levels.
Jessica Wagner Oeffner
Brian L. Williams
Brian Williams joined Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group in 2020, and now works to help cities, counties and states hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for the national opioid crisis. Mr. Williams recently served as an Assistant Colorado Attorney General in the Department of Law’s first-in-the-nation Opioid Unit, where he investigated the marketing, distribution, and sales practices of the nation’s leading opioid manufacturers and distributors. Prior to relocating to Colorado in 2017, Mr. Williams supervised and mentored a highly qualified team of investigators and attorneys as Manager of the Health Licensing Division of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. In that capacity, he also served as general counsel to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice.
Zach Schaengold
Zach Schaengold joined Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group in 2021, in order to advocate on behalf of the citizens of states and other public entities in their lawsuits against Opioid manufacturers, distributers, and dispensers. Mr. Schaengold previously served as an assistant attorney general at the office of the Ohio Attorney General, where he was a member of the Tobacco Enforcement team and helped carry out Ohio’s obligations under the Tobacco Master Settlement agreement. Before joining Baron & Budd, Mr. Schaengold represented the state of Ohio in parens patriae suits against Monsanto and DuPont for the damages caused by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and perfluorooctanoic acid and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFOA/PFAS).
Dori Persky Tesser
Dori Persky Tesser joined the Washington D.C. offices of Baron & Budd in 2021 with the Opioid Litigation Group and represents states and municipalities in their complex lawsuits against the manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers of opioids. Ms. Persky Tesser’s entire law career has revolved around helping those who have been grievously harmed by corporate greed. Before joining Baron & Budd, Ms. Persky Tesser worked at The Gori Law Firm for five years, where she represented hundreds of individuals who have developed serious illness from exposure to asbestos, leading its Washington D.C. office and Baltimore docket of cases.
Kelly Wheeler
Kelly Wheeler joined Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group in 2021 and represents states and municipalities harmed by the epidemic caused by manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers of opioids. Ms. Wheeler has focused her career on obtaining justice for people who have been seriously hurt by corporate misconduct. At her previous firm, she headed a firm’s pharmaceutical mass tort department and represented hundreds of plaintiffs against manufacturers of dangerous drugs and defective products. She was part of the trial team for the first bellwether trial against the manufacturer of Pradaxa, a prescription drug. In addition to her pharmaceutical practice, Ms. Wheeler has represented individuals and families devastated by diseases caused by exposure to asbestos.
Andrea Zarikian
Andrea Zarikian joined Baron & Budd’s Washington D.C. office in 2021 where she represents government entities in complex litigation designed to protect public health and safety and consumer interests. As an associate in our firm’s Opioid Litigation Group, Ms. Zarikian advances the rights of citizens of states and other public entities in litigation targeting the over-distribution of harmful and highly addictive prescription opioids by manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers. Prior to joining Baron & Budd, Ms. Zarikian’s practice focused on high-exposure catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases. These included toxic torts, automotive product liability, crashworthiness law, workplace negligence, and commercial trucking matters spanning jurisdictions in state and federal courts throughout the United States.
Stanford Ponson
Thomas M. Sims
Thomas M. Sims is an attorney in the Opioid Litigation Group at Baron & Budd. Since joining the firm in 1999, he has spent most of his career litigating complex environmental cases ranging from pharmaceutical injuries to water contamination to air pollution. Mr. Sims currently devotes the majority of his time to seeking compensation on behalf of individuals and public entities that have been harmed by unsafe prescription drugs. Mr. Sims is proud to be part of Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group, which assists communities that have been devastated by the opioid epidemic. Previously, he was part of the litigation team that helped seven states’ attorneys general recover a $177 million settlement against GSK regarding its fraudulent marketing of the diabetes drug Avandia.
Dan Alberstone
Dan Alberstone co-manages Baron & Budd’s Los Angeles law office. He has more than 30 years of broad experience prosecuting complex litigation matters, including extensive jury trial experience. He specializes in consumer class action litigation in the areas of consumer protection and financial fraud.
Mr. Alberstone’s reputation for tenacious representation and zealous advocacy, as well as his proven track record, has led to his selection as lead trial counsel in numerous complex, high-stakes litigation cases, as well as his appointment as lead class counsel in a number of high-profile class action cases, including cases against large national banks and multinational corporations.