A month ago, when federal district judge Lewis Kaplan spelled out what he perceived as evidence of fraud by the lawyers suing Chevron Corporation for pollution of the Amazon rain forest, we wondered how the development might affect the makeup of the plaintiffs’ legal team. We’d heard that an Am Law 100 firm was on the verge of signing on with the plaintiffs. Would this embarrassment cause the Big Law firm to think twice?
Apparently not. A mere two weeks later, Patton Boggs appeared for plaintiffs in the person of James Tyrrell Jr.: chair of the firm’s toxic tort group, a member of the Patton Boggs executive committee, and an undoubted heavy hitter. Tyrrell was reportedly good for $20 million in annual billings five years ago, before he left Latham & Watkins, and told us that he has since expanded his business considerably.
