Brent coon
Brent Coon is an American attorney and founder of Brent Coon & Associates.
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Career
According to the Houston Chronicle, "On his website, Coon says that he represents nearly 15,000 victims of the Gulf oil spill, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. He also describes his firm as having "led the charge against BP" after the disaster." U.S. News & World Report named Beaumont-based Brent Coon & Associates a Best Law Firm of 2016.
Texas City Explosion
Following the Texas City Refinery explosion, Brent Coon represented Eva Rowe, the daughter of Linda and James Rowe. Linda and James Rowe we among 15 people who were killed in the refinery explosion. Brent Coon and Associates settled her lawsuit against British Petroleum for an undisclosed amount and $32 million in donations to health care, training, and safety education.
War Hero Employee Murder Lawsuit
On April 1, 2015, at Woven Metal Products in Alvin, TX, Steven Damien Young reached into his waistband, pulled out a 38-caliber handgun and shot and killed Jacob Matthew Cadriel. Brent Coon and Eric Newell of Brent Coon and Associates and Robert A. Schwartz with the Heard Law Firm represented the estate of Mr. Cadriel in a lawsuit against Woven Metal Products. The lawsuit alleged that Woven Metal Products, Inc. who owned the facility where Mr. Cadriel worked, was negligent in knowingly providing an unsafe workplace for its employees and that the company failed to, among other things, conduct comprehensive employment background checks and criminal record searches on their employees and failed listen to numerous workers at the facility who repeatedly told them about the erratic and unstable behavior of Steven Young and who failed to provide any training or education on identifying and handling this type of violence behavior in the workplace. A jury verdict was returned awarded over a million dollars to the estate of Mr. Cadriel.
BP Oil Spill
Brent Coon represented nearly 15,000 victims of the BP Gulf Coast Oil Spill. One of the victims that Brent Coon represented was Stephen Stone, who was working on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the time of the spill. Mr. Stone and Brent Coon testified before Congress about Mr. Stone's experience of the night the Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 of fellow crew members and injuring many more.
DuPont Gas Leak
Brent Coon and Associates represented the estate of Crystle Rae Wise. Ms Wise was one of four employees at DuPont who were tragically killed on the job when deadly Methyl Mercaptan gas apparently leaked. Brent Coon reached a settlement with DuPont for an undisclosed amount in October of 15 Wise's family members donated part of the settlement in the amount of $100,000 to the Humane Society of Southeast Texas.
Forgery in BP case
In 2013, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled that Coon used a contract with a forged signature. The judge ruled that Coon use the signature to "assert that he represented a fisherman and was entitled to a cut of that man’s share of last year’s multibillion settlement with BP.” The judge told Coon that the signature Coon submitted does not match the signature on other documents that Coon’s client, Dien Nguyen, previously submitted to the court. Judge Barbier said he believed the signature was forged. Coon told Judge Barbier that he had never met Nguyen. Instead, a woman who works for Dailey’s paralegal signed up Nguyen.
As a result, the judge barred Coon from receiving any funds in the Nguyen case against BP.
Coon had partnered with an attorney, James J. Dailey in Alabama, who also claimed to have represented Nguyen. Judge Barbier issued the same decision against Dailey. "It is clear to me Mr. Dailey or Mr. Coon didn’t provide legal work entitling them to legal fees," Barbier said.
According to the Houston Chronicle, "Barbier had ordered Coon to appear for a hearing in federal court in New Orleans to explain why his claim for a 25 percent cut of Nguyen’s expected compensation under the settlement with BP should not be denied."
Previously, Coon said that thousands of BP oil spill clients had opted out of the mass settlement option offered by BP, instead choosing to pursue their own lawsuits. In November 2012, BP attorneys and lawyers for other plaintiffs told Judge Barbier that over 9,000 "opt-out documents were invalid because an attorney and not the client signed the request," according to SE Texas Record.