NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans Attorney Stuart Smith will be signing copies of his new book, “Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, And What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America,” tonight, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015, from 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. at the Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania St., New Orleans.
“I’ve tried to show in this book how the tort lawyer is not only the last line of defense for everyday citizens, but also too often the only hope for justice in an otherwise rigged system,” Smith writes. “Some people think that trial lawyers are big jerks. But if that’s true on some days, we are always jerks for the people, getting in the face of the faceless corporations.”
“Crude Justice,” published by Benbella Books, chronicles Smith’s decades-long struggle, his successes and the frustrations that plague his fight against Big Oil to this day.
Smith, a Louisiana environmental law attorney with Smith Stag, LLC, is a New Orleans native and a founding partner of the firm. He has practiced law for 22 years and has been considered a pioneer in the field of Technologically Enhanced Radioactive Material (TERM) oilfield waste litigation and achieving record verdicts for his clients. Smith devotes his casework to mass torts, class actions, environmental law, toxic torts, litigation, maritime law and personal injury.
In 2001, Smith and partner Michael Stag jointly prosecuted the widely publicized Grefer case. A jury returned a verdict of $1.056 billion dollars against Exxon/ Mobil Corporation, the world’s largest oil company, in favor of the firm's client after a six-week trial. The landmark verdict was listed in Lawyers Weekly, USA as the second largest verdict in the United States for 2001.
