It's been a busy year for trial lawyer Bobby Shannon, who parachutes in for the defense on catastrophic, high-exposure cases—often just weeks or even days before trial.

Shannon started an Atlanta outpost last June for Denver litigation firm Wheeler Trigg O'Donnell after a 27-year career at Hall Booth Smith, saying it was a better fit for his national trial practice. But in late May he joined Baker Donelson as a shareholder with associate Ciera Locklair.

Wheeler Trigg has closed its Atlanta office, which had been the 100-lawyer firm's second location outside of Denver. Its chair, Michael O'Donnell, told the Daily Report last year it opened the office solely to land Shannon.

Shannon said a rash of “nuclear verdicts” has caused his trial practice to explode. His phone has been ringing off the hook over the last year with calls from companies facing jury trials for high-exposure cases with catastrophically injured victims, he said, so he needed a big national firm with a sizable Atlanta office to support his growing case load.

A nuclear verdict is when a jury returns a plaintiffs verdict that is tens of millions dollars higher than the defense expected. “These are cases with $1 million or $2 million in exposure, and juries are coming back with $40 million verdicts,” Shannon said. “Any death or significant injury could be a multimillion-dollar verdict.”

For instance, he said, in April Atlanta plaintiffs lawyer Pete Law “hit Kroger for $81 million,” in a case where a customer was carjacked and shot in a Kroger parking lot on Moreland Avenue Kroger's liability after apportionment was $69.6 million.

Shannon said he's tried at least 69 cases to verdict and obtained favorable outcomes in more than 250 high-exposure cases. So when a company is worried that a case with big damages could go to trial, he's a lawyer they call.

“Bobby is widely known as a trial lawyer who takes on difficult cases, often shortly before trial,” said Buckner Wellford, the chair of Baker Donelson's advocacy department. “He achieves outstanding results for his clients.”

Juggling Trials

Law's $81 million verdict against Kroger was one of three big wins for Law and his partner Mike Moran that started in March with a $43 million verdict against CVS for a store parking lot shooting, also on Moreland Avenue. Both victims survived with serious injuries.

In May, the plaintiffs lawyers won a $21.6 million award from a Dalton jury for a man who lost a leg when a car hit him while he was trying to stop traffic for a truck entering the highway.

Shannon said he's had four cases against Law that went well, so companies are calling him when they have a case involving Law.

Nuclear verdicts are happening all over Georgia and popping up nationally, Shannon said. He's got 12 cases on trial calendars between now and the end of December, and his practice has more than doubled in size.

By spring, he said, he wasn't getting much sleep. “I was waking up at 3 a.m. We had seven cases specially set [for trial] in four states with exposure of close to half a billion dollars,” he said.

At that point, he had three Atlanta trials scheduled for June against high-powered plaintiffs firms—with dates set for one against Law and another against Joe Fried of Fried Rogers Goldberg—plus a case on a trial calendar against Butler Wooten & Peak.

“I was faced with prepping for trials against Joe and Pete at the same time,” Shannon said.

Fried represented the parents of a 5-year-old boy, Charlie Holt, who died from head injuries at the Sun Dial rotating restaurant atop the Westin Peachtree Plaza after he was caught between the restaurant's moving and stationary walls.

Shannon represented Marriott International, which owns the building. The case settled confidentially last week, on the eve of a June 17 trial.

Other clients include Staples, Pepsi, Premier Transportation, Schnitzer Steel and South DeKalb Mall (another Pete Law case).

“Because of these massive verdicts coming out,” Shannon said, companies are asking him to get into bigger matters and earlier on. He was having to turn down “some pretty significant cases,” he said, because he didn't have enough people to take them on, adding that one matter would have required 20 or 30 lawyers.

Shannon had only three associates and a few staff in Wheeler Trigg's Atlanta office and was too busy to recruit more, he said. “Everybody was in trial—nobody was left in the cupboard,” he said. “I was relying on support staff, paralegals and lawyers in Denver—2,000 miles away.”

He decided that he needed a firm with offices nationally, a sizable Atlanta office, and a national pay scale to recruit the talent he needed. “I need a home team and an away team,” he said.

Over the spring, he talked to nine firms and chose Baker Donelson after only six weeks. With about 800 lawyers, Baker Donelson is No. 97 on the Am Law 100 ranking by revenue. Ordinarily, partners and firms can take six months to a year to court each other.

“I had trial after trial scheduled. It was speed-dating,” Shannon said. Because of the size of the firms, he added, conflicts were an issue along with their ability to help service his clients.

Baker Donelson pushed to make it happen, he said. While he was on a case in South Carolina, the firm set up a 9:30 p.m. phone conference with several of its senior people to accommodate his schedule.

Shannon said the split from Wheeler Trigg was amicable—so much so that O'Donnell vouched for his practice and abilities as a trial lawyer with several firms he was considering.

“Michael O'Donnell will always be a good friend of mine,” Shannon said. “I was at one firm for 27 years, and now I have made two moves in less than a year. I hope this is my last move.”