On March 18, Fordham Law alumna Brittany Russell of Belluck & Fox, LLP won a $4 million verdict on behalf of a New York plant worker who is suffering from mesothelioma and lung cancer as a result of asbestos exposure. The case was decided in the Supreme Court of New York, County of Oneida. It is the county’s largest asbestos verdict to date.
Russell attributes her accomplishment to her experience with the Brendan Moore Trial Advocates, for which she was a member during her time at Fordham Law. She believes that the hours she, as a law student, spent working with real lawyers as trial advocacy coaches prepared her to clinch the recent win. “The only reason that I was able to do it was because of what I learned with the Brendan Moore Advocates,” she said.
The case, Nicholas Dominick and Lorraine J. Dominick v. A.O. Smith Water Products, et al., was brought by plaintiffs Nicholas Dominick and his wife, Lorraine J. Dominick. The jury found that Dominick was exposed to bags of asbestos supplied by a company called Charles Millar while working as an internal grinder at the Chicago Pneumatic tool manufacturing plant in New York between 1968 and 1973. The jury awarded the Dominick family $1 million for past pain and suffering and $3 million for future pain and suffering. They assessed 30% of the fault to Charles Millar and its successor-in-interest Pacemaker Steel & Piping Company.
Russell tried the case along with Belluck & Fox partner Bryan Belasky, a 1995 Fordham Law graduate. The verdict was a huge accomplishment for a lawyer as young as Russell, who was 25 years old when the case began and turned 26 just four days before the verdict came out.
Russell earned her B.A. from Fordham University and graduated from Fordham Law in 2013. In her 2L year as a Brendan Moore Advocate, Russell was the American Bar Association Labor and Employment Law regional champion and a national semifinalist. Additionally, she was the National Trial Competition New York Regional Champion in 2013 and won the Abraham Abramovsky Award for Excellence in Trial Advocacy upon her graduation the same year.
Russell gave the closing arguments at the trial, something she had not yet done during her legal career. Despite the fact that she was treading in new territory, Russell said that she felt no nerves whatsoever thanks to all the time she spent practicing trials with the Brendan Moore Advocates. Russell’s performance during the closing arguments was deft enough to leave an impression. “One of the partners who was there watching my closing said to me afterwards, ‘Where did you learn to do that?'” Russell explained. “I said, ‘I’m a Brendan Moore Advocate.'”
Russell has remained involved with the Brendan Moore Trial Advocates. She currently coaches for the program and continued to do so during the weekends over the course of the three-week trial. She is extremely proud of the program, which is currently New York State’s top-ranked trial advocacy program, and the nation’s 13th-place trial advocacy program according to rankings by the U.S. News and World Report. Russell is grateful to the program for the legal practice it afforded her, and to the program’s founders Tom Moore and Judy Livingston, and its Directors Professor James Kainen and Adam Shlahet. She and she feels that her success is directly attributable to the program. “I think that my real life win is just another win for the Moores, really,” she said.