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In Memoriam: Texas Plaintiffs Lawyer Fred Baron
Texas Lawyer
October 31, 2008
Attorney Fred Baron
Image: Mark Graham/Texas Lawyer
Dallas plaintiffs lawyer Fred Baron died Thursday after battling multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. He was 61.
Baron was known for his representation of plaintiffs in asbestos litigation.
While a student at the University of Texas School of Law, from which he graduated in 1971, he was "proselytized" by a speech given by Ralph Nader about using "the law as an instrument of social change to regulate corporate conduct," Baron told Texas Lawyer in December 2006.
Baron's first job was with a Dallas labor law firm, Mullinax, Wells, Mauzy & Collins. It was there that he filed his first asbestos case.
In 1975, he left to form Dallas' Baron & Budd. Baron sold his interest in the firm in 2002. Baron and his wife, attorney Lisa Blue, who also is a former Baron & Budd partner, subsequently formed Dallas' Baron & Blue.
"He took toxic-tort cases when few other lawyers would take them, because they were too expensive, too risky and too complicated," says Brent Rosenthal, a former partner of Baron's and a close friend.
Darlene Ewing, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, says Baron had a huge impact on law and politics in Texas.
"He blazed a trail for the little guy who couldn't afford a lawyer and took on corporations," Ewing says. "He did that when other people weren't doing that."
Baron, a former president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, was a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser.
"He single-handedly revitalized the Democratic Party in Texas," says Susan Hays, a solo practitioner in Dallas and former chairwoman of the Dallas Democratic Party.
Baron founded and heavily funded the Texas Democratic Trust, an organization that helped Democrats win more than 40 trial benches in Dallas County during the 2006 general election.
"He was willing to put the money in an organization that was floundering and was ill-equipped to fight its way back," Ewing says. "I'm glad he got to see the fruit of some of his work.
Matt Angle, director of the Texas Democratic Trust, says Baron was more than a contributor to the party. "He was someone that inspired the Democratic Party and people in the Democratic Party to fight back and to fight back smartly.
"He had such a positive outlook," Angle says. "Anytime you saw Fred, he was in a good mood and it was a good day and good things were going to happen. It was infectious."
Baron, who recently served as the finance chairman of U.S. Sen. John Edwards' presidential campaign, came under fire this summer for providing financial assistance to a woman with whom Edwards admitted having an affair. At the time, Baron told Texas Lawyer that, when he paid for the woman's move to California, he was simply helping out a friend. Baron said he only learned of the affair shortly before the rest of the nation did in August.
In recent weeks, news of Baron's illness surfaced after his son, Andrew Baron, on Oct. 14 posted a letter online that Andrew had sent to James C. Mullen, the chief executive officer of Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen Idec Inc. In the letter, Andrew Baron sought to reverse Biogen's initial decision to deny his father's physician's request to give Fred Baron an experimental cancer drug treatment, Tysabri, that Andrew argued could have save his father's life. Baron subsequently received the medication.
Baron "was very passionate, very energetic and very creative," says Rosenthal, adding, "it took a degree of perseverance to develop a successful working relationship with him because of that but once you did, he was loyal to you forever to a fault."
