About

Immediately following my graduation from the University of Kentucky College of Law (where I served as an Associate Editor on the Kentucky Law Journal and graduated with honors), I successfully completed a two-year judicial clerkship with a federal trial court judge, the Honorable Jennifer B. Coffman, Kentucky’s first female federal district judge. Immediately thereafter, I began a private practice in my wife’s hometown of Somerset, Kentucky, where, until recently, I worked for 12 years (2003-2015) as a successful trial lawyer in south-central Kentucky, focusing on the prosecution of personal injury and civil rights cases.In the past 13 years as a solo trial lawyer, I have litigated well more than 500 cases from beginning to end. Many of these cases have been complex, ranging from wrongful death and legal and medical malpractice cases to multi-million dollar insurance disputes. Additionally, I have successfully prosecuted several civil rights cases under Title VII, the ADA, ADEA, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state civil rights laws. In all of these cases, I have represented poor or relatively powerless groups or individuals against comparatively powerful corporations, government authorities and/or insurance companies. As a private trial lawyer over the past decade, I have been able to help recover tens of millions of dollars for hundreds of different clients, including, most recently and significantly, a wrongful death jury verdict in excess of $3.75 million against a local housing authority that was finalized in early 2014 and for which I was recently inducted into the Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Additionally, during my service as a private trial attorney, I have served as lead or sole counsel in 18 cases that were tried to 12-person juries, winning favorable verdicts in 13 of them. Furthermore, of course, in my capacity as a successful solo practitioner, I have developed a full complement of legal and case management skills, including strategic client intake and case evaluation, ongoing client consultation and communication, legal writing and drafting (having drafted a full range of legal documents, including hundreds of complaints and other pleadings, motions, discovery documents, responses to summary judgment motions, trial and appellate briefs, jury instructions, orders and judgments, settlement and other agreements, wills, deeds and other legal instruments), legal research (trained in and fluent with both Westlaw & Lexis-Nexis), expert and other witness interviewing and preparation, multi-lawyer and multi-office collaborations, oral and appellate advocacy (having served as lead or solo counsel in hundreds of hearings and a handful of bench trials in state and federal courts and in trial and appellate courts, including the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and Kentucky’s Supreme Court and Court of Appeals), negotiations with opposing counsel (having participated in more than 50 formal mediations and negotiated settlements of more than $5 million), and the conduct of formal and informal case development, discovery and investigations (having conducted scores of 30(b)(6) corporate depositions by video, and having performed all forms of other discovery). 

Practices Areas

Litigation

Car Accident

Personal Injury

Wrongful termination

Language

English

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