Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman vice president and senior shareholder R. Brent Wisner is a finalist for the Consumer Attorneys of California's Consumer Attorney of the Year award for 2021.
Wisner was selected as a finalist for the Consumer Attorney of the Year award for "protecting consumers from a dangerous weedkiller" in the Roundup cancer litigation against St. Louis-based Monsanto Company (now part of Bayer). Many thousands of people from across the nation alleged in lawsuits that exposure to the company's Roundup herbicide causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
During the Monsanto litigation, Wisner and his firm de-designated and published discovery documents now known as the Monsanto Papers that revealed Monsanto executives and scientists knew Roundup caused cancer. According to lawsuits in the litigation, Monsanto concealed the link to cancer instead of informing consumers about the known dangers.
"We know that they are lying because we have the data," Wisner said of Monsanto in a 2018 interview with 60 Minutes Australia about the litigation. "We have their own studies that they themselves conducted that show when you expose animals or expose humans to this, you see genetic damage, you see lymphoma."
Wisner served as co-lead trial in two cases against Monsanto. The first trial in 2018, Johnson v. Monsanto Co., ended in a $289 million verdict for the plaintiff, Dewayne "Lee" Johnson. The next trial Wisner co-led was Pilliod et al. v. Monsanto Co. This time, Wisner and his colleagues earned a $2.055 billion verdict, one of the largest in the nation in 2019. In addition to his trial wins, Wisner served on the plaintiffs' leadership for the consolidated Roundup Product Cases Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings (JCCP).
The court victories laid the groundwork for last year's $10.9 billion settlements with Bayer to resolve tens of thousands of Roundup cases.
A good deal of attorneys would consider it a job well done and move on to the next case after obtaining two historic jury verdicts and helping negotiate a massive settlement. But Wisner's advocacy goes beyond the courtroom. Before the settlement negotiations ended with a successful resolution, he traveled to the European Union and Canada to discuss the Monsanto Papers and the impact of the litigation, worked with California prosecutors to alter the Roundup label, and gave talks on his work at some of the nation's most prestigious law schools. His efforts made a difference. In 2021, Monsanto (Bayer) agreed to issue a warning label on Roundup products and pull the product from the residential market starting in 2023.
The Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC) honors lawyers and members of its organization every year that "significantly advanced the rights or safety of California consumers by achieving a noteworthy result in a case." This year's finalists for the award were selected by a committee of CAOC Executive Committee members, previous Consumer Attorney of the Year award winners, and six members of CAOC's Board of Directors who were randomly chosen for the committee.
CAOC's board submitted secret ballots today to determine the award winner, which will be announced on November 20, 2021, at the organization's 60th Annual Convention.
About R. Brent Wisner
R. Brent Wisner is vice president and senior shareholder at Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman where he focuses his practice on mass tort litigation, consumer fraud cases, and pharmaceutical class actions. He manages the firm's San Francisco Bay Area office in Larkspur.
Mr. Wisner's groundbreaking legal work in the trial of Pilliod et al. v. Monsanto Co. resulted in a $2.055 billion jury verdict, one of the largest personal injury verdicts in history. At 35 years of age when the verdict was read, he became the youngest attorney ever to win a multi-billion-dollar jury verdict.
His firm recently received the honor of "California Powerhouse" by Law360 for its strong regional presence and major achievements in the Monsanto Roundup litigation and other high-profile cases. Winning more than $4 billion in verdicts and settlements, Baum Hedlund has earned a reputation as a powerful force against corporate interests that show more concern for their bottom line than the lives of its consumers.
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