In 2024, Davis, Johnston, & Ringger partners Gary Davis and Billy Ringger, along with colleague Jeff Friedman, were honored as national finalists for the “Trial Lawyer of the Year Award” presented by the organization Public Justice at its annual Gala and Awards Presentation in Nashville, Tennessee. Public Justice is a national nonprofit legal advocacy organization that takes on the biggest systemic threats to justice of our time, including abusive corporate power, assault on civil rights and liberties, and destruction of earth’s sustainability. Each year, the organization presents its “Trial Lawyer of the Year Award” to the trial attorney or legal team who made the greatest contribution to the public interest within the past year by trying or settling a socially significant case.
Attorneys Davis, Ringger, and Friedman were honored as finalists for this award for their roles in representing the hundreds of workers sickened by unprotected exposure to coal ash during remediation of the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Coal Ash Spill – the largest industrial disaster in United States history. Over the course of nearly ten years of litigation, the plaintiffs’ legal team fought against a multi-billion-dollar global engineering firm and opposing counsel from some of the nation’s best law firms. In 2018, the legal team lead by Davis and Friedman won a landmark four-week Phase I trial to establish liability and general causation on behalf of the injured workers.
As a result of their dedication and expertise, the jury found the defendant’s misconduct responsible for 10 specific medical conditions present among the workers, including various cancers, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular illnesses. Thereafter, following a lengthy mediation, the legal team lead by Mr. Ringger and his former law firm continued the massive effort to establish specific causation for the individual workers. Mr. Ringger and his colleagues engaged in countless briefing and discovery disputes; took and defended hundreds of depositions (including over 200 within a two-and-half-month period during the peak of the COVID pandemic); worked closely with many of the nation’s top scientists, researchers, and physicians to further the science of coal ash exposure and its connection to the specific illnesses identified during the Phase I trial; engaged in mediation sessions and settlement negotiations over the course of many months; and met with and obtained settlement approval from hundreds of individual clients. The team also handled briefing and argument on multiple appeals, including two before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and one in the Tennessee Supreme Court. These multi-year efforts were successful in achieving a remarkable victory for these impacted workers, and Mr. Davis and Mr. Ringger were proud to be named as finalists for this prestigious award.