[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_4″ last=”no” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_imageframe lightbox=”no” lightbox_image=”” style_type=”none” hover_type=”none” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”0px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”none” link=”” linktarget=”_self” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”no” class=”” id=””] 
[/fusion_imageframe][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”3_4″ last=”yes” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_text]By Mark Curriden
(June 2) – Walter Umphrey stood at the side of a conference room at the Doubletree Hotel in Austin in January 1998 as the press conference began.
Then-Texas Attorney General Dan Morales unveiled a huge cardboard check from the nation’s largest cigarette makers to state officials for $15.3 billion – the single largest settlement of a civil lawsuit in U.S. history.
“The true heroes are these great lawyers right here,” Morales said, pointing to Umphrey and a handful of others. “These lawyers took great risks, worked thousands of hours and spent millions of their own dollars to make this day possible.”
Umphrey, a physically large man with a perpetually stern look, simply nodded in appreciation of the recognition but declined to step to the podium or make any public comments.
Nearly two decades later, Umphrey remains nearly as reticent to discuss the historic tobacco litigation.
“It was the biggest and most important case of my life,” says Umphrey, who has practice law for more than 50 years. “The case was about public health and punishing an industry that made billions and billions of dollars at the expense of public health.
“And yes, we made a lot of money, too,” he admits.
Indeed. Umphrey and four other lawyers were later awarded $3.3 billion to split.
Now 80 years old, Umphrey has lived an extraordinary life and achieved amazing success – all because of his passion for the law and for seeking justice for the working middle class.
During his five-decade legal career, he’s won billions of dollars for thousands of people made seriously ill by asbestos. He’s won multimillion-dollar verdicts and settlements against negligent trucking companies whose fleets killed innocent drivers. He’s earned hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in contingency fee cases. And he’s donated hundreds of millions to his favorite charities.
Walter and Joe
Umphrey even tried two cases with his old plaintiff’s lawyer buddy, Joe Jamail.
“Walter is a great lawyer and a truly good hearted man,” Jamail said in an interview a few weeks before his death last year. “But what I like most about Walter is that he, like me, enjoys waking up in the morning and kicking some arrogant, asshole corporate executives in the ass because they deserve it.”
Umphrey and Jamail teamed up to try a case in which a crash involving a commercial tractor-trailer caused a police officer to lose his leg. The trucking company offered $300,000 to settle the case before trial. Umphrey and Jamail politely refused – actually, Jamail threatened to shove the offer up the defense lawyer’s ass. They convinced the jury to award $16 million in damages.
Umphrey grew up poor in South Texas. He says he stayed that way for many years.
“When I finished law school, everything I owned could fit in the back of my car,” he says.
Umphrey played football in high school and was good enough to be awarded a scholarship to play at Southern Methodist University. After a couple years, he transferred to Baylor University to finish his bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1959.
”I worked for a while as an insurance adjuster in Port Arthur, but I got tired of seeing the lawyers get all the money,” he says.
After graduating from Baylor Law School in 1965, Umphrey joined the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office as an assistant prosecutor. During his three-and-a-half years there, he tried scores and scores of cases and eventually rose to the position of chief felony prosecutor.
“There is no greater experience than being a state prosecutor if you want experience trying cases,” he says.
Rags to Riches
In 1969, Umphrey and David Provost joined forces and opened Provost Umphrey Law Firm, which focused on representing individuals in personal injury and products liability litigation.
Umphrey scored big in his first jury trial in federal court in 1972 with a $4 million verdict. At the time, he thought it might be the most money he would ever win for a client.
He was wrong. Way wrong.
Less than 30 miles from Umphrey’s office, another lawyer named Ward Stephenson in nearby Orange, Texas, filed a lawsuit on behalf of his client, Clarence Borel. The complaint accused 11 corporations, including Fibreboard Paper Products and Johns-Mansfield Products, of manufacturing a deadly product without providing enough warning.
Umphrey didn’t realize it at the time, but the Borel case would wildly change his career and personal life.
The jury ruled in favor of the Borel family and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Minor Wisdom, upheld the verdict.
The decision triggered a tidal wave of litigation against the asbestos makers and their insurance companies – a wave that Umphrey and his team would ride for more than two decades.
Umphrey got his first asbestos case in 1974 when a friend of a business partner became a client. Realizing the problem could be widespread, Umphrey began having union workers at the Port Arthur Refinery and Chemical Co. tested for asbestos. By the mid-1970s, he had signed several hundred clients who tested positive for cancer or other asbestos-related diseases as clients and was taking the cases to trial.
In 1986, Umphrey was the lead trial lawyer in a certified class action called Jenkins v. Raymark, representing 741 asbestos victims. Then-U.S. District Judge Robert Parker conducted a 25-day trial that resulted in a $130 million settlement.
Four years later, Umphrey took a second class action, Cimino v. Raymark Industries, to trial before Judge Parker. This second case involved about 2,300 plaintiffs. The verdict: $1 billion.
The victory earned Umphrey the title, “King of Asbestos Litigation.”
“Walter knows what it means to be the little guy with no money,” says Houston lawyer Harry Potter, a former assistant state attorney general who worked with Umphrey during the tobacco litigation. “Walter is extraordinarily passionate about fighting for the rights of the average worker against corporations that have caused them ill or harm.
Potter says Umphrey “always speaks his mind if he thinks you are wrong,” but he does so in a “respectful manner.”
“In court, Walter is great at cutting to the heart of a complex matter,” he says.
Potter says that Umphrey’s success in the asbestos litigation was the key reason why he was selected to lead Texas’ efforts against the cigarette makers.
“Walter knew what it was like to challenge and defeat the biggest and most powerful corporations in the world and their armies of lawyers,” Potter says.
Giving Back
Umphrey is also known as an excellent businessman. He once owned a bank and a three million acre ranch in Australia – both of which he reportedly sold for a solid profit.
But Umphrey also has a reputation as an extraordinarily generous giver to public causes.
In 2000, he donated $10 million to help build the Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center on the banks of the Brazos River at Baylor University. In 2009, Umphrey provided the finances for the construction of the Sheila Umphrey Recreational Sports Center at Lamar University in Beaumont. Umphrey and his firm also gave $4 million to Lamar for the construction of Provost«Umphrey Stadium for football.
And the newest cancer institute in Southeast Texas was named the Walter Umphrey Cancer Center, which is the result of years of dedicated support and several million dollars in donations.
“Much has been given to me,” he says. “I am pleased that I am able to give back.”[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]