Cases
Case outcomes depend on specific facts and law; these examples are provided for informational purposes only
This appeal asked the Eighth Circuit to reverse dismissal of an FTCA wrongful-death case arising from a fatal on-base motor-vehicle collision caused by a civilian government employee.
The brief argues the Feres doctrine should not bar claims that do not require a court to second-guess military decision-making—particularly where, as here, the alleged negligence is an ordinary civilian driving accident.
In this appeal, UMB Bank attempted to reframe a probate/trust dispute involving the Thomas Hart Benton trusts into a federal civil RICO case. I drafted the briefing that won dismissal in the district court and then wrote the appellate brief defending that dismissal, focusing on threshold defects like RICO standing and failure to plead a pattern of racketeering activity.
In consolidated appeals involving hundreds of individualized ERISA arbitrations, DST argued that a later-certified mandatory class action in New York blocked confirmation of final arbitration awards. This brief defends the district court’s orders confirming the awards, explaining why confirmation is a limited, summary FAA proceeding and why DST’s class-certification and injunction theories did not bar enforcement.
In a high-stakes ERISA fiduciary-breach dispute involving DST Systems’ 401(k) plan, I represented arbitration claimants in a multi-hundred–claim proceeding that DST itself had compelled to be arbitrated in Missouri, where the arbitrations progressed through discovery, hearings, and awards (many later confirmed as judgments). When DST pivoted to a mandatory class strategy in federal court and obtained an injunction halting the Missouri arbitrations and enforcement of awards, I challenged the injunction in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals as an improper end-run around the FAA and an interference with the Western District of Missouri’s authority and judgments.
In the National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation, I wrote the appellants’ brief challenging a federal MDL court order that enjoined Missouri plaintiffs from moving forward with their independently filed state-court concussion case. The brief framed the issue as a hard limit on federal power: under the Anti–Injunction Act, a federal court generally may not halt a state proceeding, and the All Writs Act does not expand that authority beyond the Anti–Injunction Act’s narrow exceptions. The appeal required close analysis of the interaction between MDL management, Rule 23 settlement proceedings, and federalism constraints—and argued that protecting a proposed class settlement is not, by itself, a lawful basis to shut down parallel, in-personam state tort litigation.
In the NFL Concussion MDL, I wrote several motions to remand seeking to return former players’ Missouri state-law claims against their team to Missouri state court after a second removal attempt. The motion argued that the claims arose from common-law duties independent of any collective bargaining agreement (defeating § 301 preemption), that a prior federal remand ruling was law of the case (and warranted comity in the MDL), and that removal was also barred because the claims implicated Missouri’s workers’ compensation/ occupational disease framework.