It's now more than three weeks since the Rhode Island Supreme Court overturned the verdict against the lead paint defendants Sherwin-Williams, NL Industries, and Millennium Holdings, and upheld the acquittal of ARCO. The professional lives of the four lead defense attorneys in this long litigation siege have to be changing. Those Four Horsemen of RI lead paint are Mickey Pohl, Don Scott, Mike Nilan, and John Tarantino.
Their brand equity is not only way up. It will stay up no matter what might happen on the lead paint front in Ohio, Wisconsin, Mississippi or California - all places public nuisance or personal injury suits are pending. The RI victory was so high-profile [recall how the RI SC oral arguments were webcast globally] and so total that no setback in lead paint anywhere else could take away from it. Moreover, each state has its own laws, making the other cases not-Rhode Island.
No doubt, their law firms have been aggressively leveraging this win for new business and retaining old business. Lots of awards will come from various professional organizations, including state bar associations. Perhaps the attorneys have increased their fees.
That's expected. But more interesting is the uncertainty of what's next for these four rock stars of the legal world.
Their firms might have mandatory retirement so they might have incentive to consider opportunities presented to them to become judges, heads of law schools [Scott's the lawyer's lawyer], think tanks, and perhaps even major corporations [Pohl has a great head for business], or members of the next Administration. Publishers are likely hounding them with book proposals. Given former Providence major Buddy Cianci's connections with the movie industry, there could be ideas popping for films about the litigation mess. Can't you seen the scene of Scott sleepless in a Providence hotel before closing arguments or the one with Tarantino rowing his angst away? Or, they could simply go on to argue an even more complex, more high-stakes type of litigation involving a global supply chain or carbon footprints.
Whatever. I will be observing and blogging about the future of these four litigators.
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