Few would consider $2.44 million and $440,000 in attorney fees in a prisoner's rights case as a bad haul for a newcomer to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Following her first appearance there last year, Christine Stetson, an associate in Beaumont's Bernsen Law Firm, won a favorable ruling, bolstering the odds that her clients, family members of a detainee who died in an Orange County, Texas, jail, would win a final judgment of that size. In January her victory led to the Orange County Commissioners Court deciding to pay a $3.175 million judgment against the county in favor of her clients.

Her clients, whom Stetson, along with David and Cade Bernsen, represented at trial and on appeal, filed wrongful death and deliberate indifference claims against Orange County after their relative Robert Montano died of renal failure in jail following days spent in a cell without running water or a toilet.