Robert Bilott | |
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Alma mater | New College of Florida (BA) Ohio State University (JD) |
Occupation | Environmental lawyer |
Known for | Class action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs from Parkersburg, West Virginia |
Spouse(s) | Sarah Barlage ( m. 1996) |
In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont’s lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation. The Tennants settled.
That was in 1998. In 2001, Bilott filed a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of 70,000 people. In 2004, DuPont settled for more than $300 million. Trials in related cases continue today.
Rob Bilott’s lawsuit against DuPont in West Virginia included anyone whose drinking water had levels above 0.05 parts per billion.
Bilott is currently prosecuting Wolf v. DuPont, the second of the personal-injury cases filed by the members of his class. The plaintiff, John M. Wolf of Parkersburg, claims that PFOA in his drinking water caused him to develop ulcerative colitis.
$671 million dollarsHis litigation efforts yielded more than $671 million dollars in damages for approximately 3,500 people. DuPont also settled with the EPA, agreeing to pay a mere $16.5 million fine for failure to disclose their findings about C8, a toxin that is now estimated to be present in 98 percent of the world's population.
Dubbed by The New York Times Magazine as “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare” in an article published on Jan. 6, 2016, Bilott has represented a diverse array of clients, nationwide, who have been harmed by PFAS substances.
Robert Bilott is a partner at the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio where he has practiced environmental law and litigation for more than twenty-eight years.
Bilott is known for the lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs from West Virginia. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of the chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)....Robert BilottSpouse(s)Sarah Barlage ( m. 1996)Children35 more rows
In 2018, Bilott filed a lawsuit against corporate entities tied to DuPont — which became defunct in 2017 — as well as 3M and other major chemical companies. The suit seeks to explore the health effects of these alternative PFAS.
Robert Bilott is a partner at the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio where he has practiced environmental law and litigation for more than twenty-eight years.
In 2017, Bilott won a $671 million settlement on behalf of more than 3,500 plaintiffs. Those people claimed they had contracted diseases, among them kidney cancer and testicular cancer, from chemicals DuPont allegedly knew may have been dangerous for decades, and allowed to contaminate their drinking water anyway.
Robert A. BilottE bilott@taftlaw.com.T (513) 357-9638.F (513) 381-0205.
DuPont and Chemours Co have agreed to pay $671 million in cash to settle thousands of lawsuits involving a leak of a toxic chemical used to make Teflon, the companies said on Monday.
12/24/2019 The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare - The New York Times 1/11 J FEATURE Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution. By Nathaniel Rich Jan. 6, 2016 ust months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius ...
Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.
The restaurant was sued by Albert Dytch over access issues. Credit... Balazs Gardi for The New York Times. In the United States, people with disabilities are “among the poorest, least employed and least educated of all minorities,” Lennard J. Davis, a scholar of disability studies, has written.
In 2012, plaintiffs filed 2,495 Title III cases in federal court. By 2017, that had more than tripled to 7,663 cases — more than half of which were filed in California or Florida, whose state laws can be particularly beneficial to A.D.A. plaintiffs.
The customer filing the suit was the one from that December — Albert Dytch, a 71-year-old man with muscular dystrophy who has filed more than 180 A.D.A. lawsuits in California. With the support of a prolific lawyer named Tanya Moore, Dytch has sued restaurants, movie theaters, shops and educational institutions.
So far, none of the hotel lawsuits have been decided in favor of the plaintiff, but a vast majority are still pending. In June, the case against the Handlery was dismissed by a federal judge. Stillman, who represented the hotel, is among those who believe lawyers bringing these suits are after money, not justice.
The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare. Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.
Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. Credit... Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. ‘‘Rob’s letter lifted the curtain on a whole new theater,’’ says Harry Deitzler, a plaintiff’s lawyer in West Virginia who works with Bilott.
By the ’90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer.
J ust months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg’s lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. Bilott struggled to make sense of everything he was saying. He might have hung up had Tennant not blurted out the name of Bilott’s grandmother, Alma Holland White.
The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer.
Bilott is given to understatement. (‘‘To say that Rob Bilott is understated,’’ his colleague Edison Hill says, ‘‘is an understatement.’’) The story that Bilott began to see, cross-legged on his office floor, was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. ‘‘I was shocked,’’ he said.
He did not have a typical Taft résumé. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League.