Plaintiffs lawyer Drew Ashby has opened his own firm, emboldened by a $13.35 million jury verdict that he secured in July for a client seriously burned in a chemical accident.

Ashby said he is focusing on catastrophic injury cases at the Ashby Firm, which launched earlier this month—especially injuries or deaths caused from product defects, chemical exposure and other industrial accidents.

Ashby, 37, had been law partners with well-known plaintiffs attorney Lance Cooper at the Cooper Firm. "If I didn't do this now at 37, I was never going to do it. I didn't want to wonder when I'm older if I could have had my own firm," Ashby said, adding that encouragement from Cooper and several friends also prompted him to take the leap.

Ashby joined Cooper's firm five years ago after spending the first seven years of his legal career as a civil litigator, mostly doing defense work. That included a stint working with Bill Mitchell at Cruser Mitchell, whom Ashby called a "great mentor and boss."

"I decided doing plaintiffs work was all I ever wanted to do—and I wanted to work with someone practicing at a high level with high integrity," Ashby said of his move to the Cooper Firm.

He and Cooper won the $13.35 million verdict for their client, Anthony Ugalde, who was permanently injured and left with serious scarring over more than half his body from an accident at a paper mill outside of Valdosta.

Ugalde had been hired by a contractor to do equipment maintenance at the paper mill, and he was removing the last bolt to the lid of a chemical tank when between 200 and 500 gallons of hot chemicals erupted out of the tank and all over him, according to a Daily Report account based on court documents. Ugalde had earlier taken off a protective suit after a mill maintenance employee said he didn't need it, according to the plaintiff's filings.

The July 25 verdict, a record for Lowndes County, was subject to a high-low settlement agreement that the plaintiff made the day before the verdict with the mill owner, Packaging Corp. of America, specifying the range of a settlement depending on the jury's verdict. The verdict apportioned 74% of the fault to the mill owner, 24% to the contractor and 2% to Ugalde.

Ashby said he originated the case and worked on it for four years before trying it with Cooper. Industrial accident cases tend to be "long and drawn out," he added, because they require a lot of digging. "They involve incredibly complex machinery and systems, plus a lot of policies and procedures."

The big verdict provided Ashby the financial resources he needed to start his own firm—and, just as important, he said, it gave him the confidence that he was ready.

"Making meaningful change in the lives of my clients is my No. 1 goal," he explained, and so his success on Ugalde's behalf gave him the validation that he could "be effective helping clients on my own, without a more established, experienced partner."

A lot of Ashby's clients have become like family, he said, because he takes on only a limited number of cases for people in serious need of legal help.

The Ashby Firm is located at 5447 Roswell Road in Sandy Springs.

BRIEFLY

Darren Tobin of Tobin Injury Law has hired an associate, Daesik Shin, for his solo plaintiffs shop after amicably splitting with Jeb Butler in June from their former firm, Butler Tobin.

Like Tobin, Shin started out as a family law attorney, joining from the Manely Firm where he gained client and courtroom experience. Unlike Tobin, Shin is fluent in Korean. He was born in South Korea and moved to California as a child, then earned a degree in biochemistry from Yonsei University in Seoul. After working as a Korean Army interpreter and translator for its liaisons with the U.S. Army, Shin earned a law degree in 2014 from Georgia State University College of Law.

Commercial real estate law firm Hartman Simons has hired Todd Surden as senior counsel for its litigation team from Macey Wilensky & Hennings. Surden has been practicing law in Atlanta for almost 15 years.

Hall Benefits Law has added Scott Santerre as senior ERISA compliance counsel from Standard Insurance Company in Portland, Oregon, which handles insurance and employee retirement plans. Santerre served for four years as The Standard's lead privacy attorney.

Owen Gleaton Egan Jones & Sweeney has hired two litigation associates: Julie Comer from Hawkins Parnell & Young and Tyler Jones from Atkins David. Comer and Jones are practicing business litigation, insurance defense, employment and intellectual property law at Owen Gleaton.

National labor and employment firm Fisher & Phillips has hired Annie Herndon Reese as an associate from Hall Booth Smith, where she handled catastrophic injury and professional negligence defense litigation. At Fisher Phillips, Reese is representing employers in a variety of litigation.

Robert W. Hughes & Associates in Lawrenceville has hired J. Enrique Morales as an associate for its probate litigation team. Morales clerked for Judge Bedelia Hargrove of DeKalb County Probate Court after earning a J.D. from GSU Law in 2017. He also interned for Judge Christopher Ballar of Gwinnett County Probate Court during law school.

McGuireWoods has named Keisha Coleman a partner in its Atlanta office, out of 12 new partners nationally. Coleman is a trial lawyer focused on complex financial services, business, securities and white-collar criminal litigation and investigations.

Intellectual property law partner Tina McKeon of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has won the Southeast BIO Leadership Award. As the current SEBIO chair, McKeon negotiated a merger between SEBIO, which is a regional nonprofit aimed at growing the life sciences industry, and the Southeastern Medical Device Association, effective Nov. 7, to strengthen the bioscience support system in the Southeast.

Germaine Austin of Hawkins Parnell & Young has been appointed to the Atlanta Citizen Review Board as the representative for the Gate City Bar Association, which is the state's African American bar group. The board, a city of Atlanta agency, investigates and mediates cases of alleged misconduct by the Atlanta Police Department or Department of Corrections officers.

Doug Burrell of Drew Eckl Farnham was named first vice president of DRI-The Voice of the Defense Bar (formerly known as the Defense Research Institute) at the group's annual meeting in New Orleans, which puts him in line to become DRI president in 2021.

D. Barret Broussard of Carlton Fields was elected president of the Stonewall Bar Association of Georgia, the state's LGBTQ bar group, effective Nov. 1. Broussard joined Stonewall in 2010, in his first year at Emory University Law School.