Celebrating Forty Years of Practice
Celebrating 40 Years Of PracticeBy: Mona Lisa WallaceDid you know that last year Wallace & Graham celebrated its 40th year of business? Perhaps no one is more surprised than me.
In 1981, I decided to open my own law firm against all odds: a female attorney, a female business owner, a female boss, who was in her 20s, in the early 1980s, in a small town, in the South. I knew that I had passion and fight. I knew how much I cared about helping people. I knew my work ethic would carry me through the toughest of times. I could have never predicted that 40 years later, I would be joined by 60 incredible attorneys and legal professionals, joined for 30 years by the same steadfast and brilliant business partner, Bill Graham, and for 14 years by my equally passionate daughter, Whitney Wallace Williams, and that our talented team would be holding some of the most powerful corporations in the world accountable for legal wrongdoings.The David versus Goliath challenges began almost at the beginning. As early as 1982, our firm took up the fight to provide a safe working environment for workers. By 1983, I began representing workers exposed to asbestos and chemicals, new litigation for the industry. Our team has worked tirelessly for decades to achieve unique success in representing injured workers harmed by dangerous exposures. We have represented thousands of workers exposed to asbestos and dangerous chemicals, as well as thousands injured on the job. We demanded employers implement their own programs of medical monitoring. We help exposed clients with early detection and cancer screenings. In one year alone, our firm’s efforts resulted in the early detection of over 100 cancers, saving lives as a result. W&G attorneys, the late Mike Pross and Ed Pauley, devoted over 20 years to representing those injured by occupational diseases, influencing the law in the field.Last year, my partner, Bill Graham, secured one of the largest verdicts in North Carolina history ($32.5 million) to help the family of a worker lost to mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by asbestos exposure.
This work is something we are deeply proud of.
In addition to helping injured workers, the addition of the exceptionally talented attorney John Hughes to our firm in 2004, has enabled us to advance our civil department, taking on some of the largest corporate actors in consumer protection class actions and mass environmental actions in North Carolina history. We have represented countless victims of automobile accidents and corporate harm and countless families of those who lost a loved one due to the negligence of another, always going the extra mile to make sure all clients receive the maximum compensation possible for their injuries and harm. Over the years, as we have witnessed fraud, corporate unaccountability, discrimination, and greed, we have fought against it at every turn, achieving justice and securing some of the largest class action settlements and verdicts in the country.
In the last seven years, our biggest challenge has been our extended litigation battle against Smithfield Foods. Briefly, the facts are: Smithfield hires farmers to grow their hogs for them, dictating that the daily waste disposal method to dispose of thousands of hogs’ urine and feces is to pump the waste out of the barns into multi-acre open-air “lagoon” ponds full of waste. To prevent the waste ponds from overflowing, the waste is launched into the air with an industrial sprayer to “fertilize” surrounding fields next to our client's homes. Hog feces was detected in and on our clients’ houses and cars. Plumes of horrific feces odor could hit our clients’ homes at any unpredictable time, and there was nothing our clients could do about it. Our clients lost the use and enjoyment of their homes. Their basic property rights were assaulted. Many families – mostly African American - had inherited their land from ancestors dating back to Reconstruction, and nearly all the clients we helped were there before these operations moved in beside them.
Our firm underwent five federal jury trials against the largest hog producer in the world – Smithfield Foods – a Chinese-owned corporation. Despite massive publicity campaigns that distorted our fight and rallied the farm community against our cause and lawsuits, the verdicts came back in favor of our clients each time. 5 straight wins. The third verdict for 10 clients was $473 million, believed to be the largest verdict in N.C. history. The surprise twists and turns of our litigation, and the seemingly insurmountable odds we faced, were so unbelievable that our fight will soon be featured in a book, to be released in June 2022, by renowned author, Corban Addison, with a foreword by John Grisham, who stated:
Wastelands . . . is the uplifting, round-by-round true story of a bunch of rural plaintiffs with no money and seemingly little hope, and the lawyers who smelled injustice and went to war on their behalf. . . . Never in my most creative moments could I have assembled such a colorful cast of characters, and then blessed them with so riveting a set of facts, and then guided them through the ins and outs and uncertainties of high-stakes litigation. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and told with an air of suspense that few writers can handle, Wastelands is a story I wish I had written.
As a result of these trials, positive changes have been made by Smithfield, yet many more need to be made for the people in Eastern North Carolina to breathe clean air and drink clean water.
Countless important cases, against so many tremendous odds, have been handled to success by our firm. Suits against predatory lenders. Suits against car dealerships who cheated consumers. Suits against companies who denied employees vested pension benefits. Suits against companies with deceptive business practices. Suits against corporations who put profit over people. Suits against companies that defrauded the government. Suits against nursing homes who run their facility to the detriment of the elderly’s safety and health.
Currently, our law firm is devoted to exposing and inciting change in the health care billing industry. North Carolina has the highest drug and hospital prices of almost any other State. We have filed two lawsuits against large hospital chains alleging deceptive and unfair health care pricing, including an 87 page lawsuit against the country’s largest hospital chain, HCA. If we can effect change and promote across-the-board transparency and fairness in health care costs on a statewide or national basis, it may be the pinnacle of my career.
Our list of fights and cases changes weekly as we see the more unfair and unjust treatment of our clients and workers throughout the country. The cases I mentioned are just a few of thousands that we have taken on, and are committed to taking on, to force change for the better in our world.
Why do we work so hard? Why do we sometimes put the demands of our work over our own needs and even sometimes, ashamedly, over the needs of our own family?
Well, it’s because of you. Our clients. You are the heart of this firm. It is because of you that we wake up every morning and go to work, waiting on the next challenge we can face to make your lives better. You are the reason we love what we do. Your support and trust in us keep a fiery passion burning throughout our firm.
This 40-year journey has been a long one; there’s no denying that. But our daily interactions with our beloved clients are what keep us moving forward. I cannot express to you the joy myself and my team feels when we are able to win big for our clients. For that, I have to thank each and every one of you. Thank you for believing in us and trusting us with some of your most important matters.
From the family, at Wallace and Graham, I would like to extend our most heartfelt thanks for you, and cheers to another forty years!
Sincerely yours,