The nationally recognized law firm Baron & Budd is pleased to announce that four of the firm’s shareholders have been selected to the 2024 edition of the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Russell Budd, Scott Summy, Roland Tellis, and John Fiske have been recognized by Lawdragon for the significant impacts they have made on the legal profession and for their successes over the last year.

Lawdragon is a legal media company that provides online news, editorials, and publishes guides to the nation’s leading lawyers. Since it was founded in 2005, Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Lawyers in America has been established as one of the most prestigious guides in the legal profession. Selections are made based on a combination of journalistic research, nominations, and peer review.

Russell W. Budd, a mainstay of the plaintiff’s bar with more than forty 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, Budd presides over one of the nation’s largest plaintiffs’ firms.

Budd was appointed to the Plaintiffs’ Settlement Negotiation Team for the National Prescription Opiate Litigation. Budd and the Settlement Negotiation Team have been responsible for negotiating more than $50 billion in settlements with the nation’s largest and most prominent drug distributors, manufacturers, and dispensers. In December 2023, Budd was appointed by the Court to serve as Co-Lead Counsel for the Attorney General litigation track in the recently formed Insulin Pricing MDL pending in the District of New Jersey.

Scott Summy started the firm’s Environmental Litigation Group (ELG) in 2002. Summy has served both in court-appointed leadership positions and directly represented clients in some of the country’s largest environmental cases with national significance.

Summy is court appointed Co-Lead Counsel in the AFFF MDL pending in Charleston, South Carolina. He was one of the architects of a comprehensive $1.185 billion settlement structure against DuPont for PFAS water contamination in public water systems announced in June 2023. That same month he also announced a record $12.5 billion nationwide class settlement with 3M agreement, the largest drinking water contamination settlement in U.S. history. Summy has been named as class counsel to oversee these historic settlements. Summy also helped negotiate a landmark $648M nationwide class settlement with Monsanto on behalf of permitted stormwater operators who discharge into PCB impaired waterbodies, believed to be the first case in U.S. history to hold the manufacturer of a product responsible for stormwater contamination.

Roland Tellis is Chair of the Class Action practice at Baron & Budd where he focuses on complex, high-profile litigation, including consumer class actions, financial fraud, business torts, corporate misconduct, automobile defects, and securities fraud. He has held leadership roles in numerous multi-district, complex class action cases, including the Southern California Gas Leak Cases, a coordinated class action filed by property owners against a gas utility for causing the largest natural gas leak in U.S. history, In re Hyundai Kia Vehicle Theft MDL, a multi-state class action involving millions of defective engine immobilizers which settled for more than $200 million, In re Wells Fargo Collateral Protection Insurance Litigation, a nationwide class action case involving forced-placed automobile collateral protection insurance which settled for more than $423 million, the Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability MDL, a multi-state class action involving hundreds of thousands of vehicles equipped with “defeat devices” designed to evade emissions laws which settled for more than $14.5 billion, and the Takata Airbag Products Liability MDL, a multi-state class action involving millions of vehicles equipped with a defective airbag inflator which resulted in the largest automotive recall in U.S. history and a $1.5 billion settlement against seven automaker defendants.

Currently, Tellis has been appointed to leadership roles in In re: ARC Airbag Inflator Products Liability Litigation, a multi-state class action involving tens of millions of defective airbag inflators, ZF-TRW Airbag Control Units Products Liability Litigation, a multi-state class action involving millions of defective airbag control units and the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, a multi-state mass tort action filed by governmental entities against the manufacturers and distributors of opioids, widely believed to be the largest MDL case in U.S. history.

John Fiske is a shareholder at Baron & Budd who represents public entities. Fiske has resolved approximately $2.35 billion for his public entity clients since 2018. He has been instrumental in the California wildfire litigation, having resolved approximately $1.65 billion for more than 70 public entities statewide against investor-owned utilities Pacific Gas & Electric Company and Southern California Edison.

About Baron & Budd, P.C.

With more than 40 years of experience, Baron & Budd has the expertise and resources to handle complex litigation throughout the United States. As a law firm that takes pride in remaining at the forefront of litigation, Baron & Budd has spearheaded many significant cases for hundreds of public entities and tens of thousands of individuals. Since the firm was founded in 1977, 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 in areas of litigation as diverse and significant as dangerous and highly addictive pharmaceuticals, defective medical devices, asbestos and mesothelioma, wildfires, environmental contamination, fraudulent banking practices, e-cigarettes, motor vehicles, federal whistleblower cases, and other consumer fraud issues.

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