Trial Experience
Caddell & Chapman’s Extensive Trial Experience
Caddell & Chapman has extensive trial experience in a wide variety of cases, which includes more than 50 jury trials and hundreds of evidentiary hearings. It is important for the defendants to know that plaintiffs’ counsel has extensive trial experience and can competently try a case. Indeed, Caddell & Chapman has tried numerous complex cases (and evidentiary hearings) against the Nation’s top defense firms to a successful conclusion. Some of the most noteworthy outcomes by Caddell & Chapman include the following:
- 2016: After a four-day jury trial, Caddell & Chapman obtained a unanimous jury verdict totaling $11.9 million that resulted in a judgment in excess of $3 million in Hidalgo County, Texas. Caddell & Chapman’s client was a block and brick manufacturer whose competitor’s defamatory statements put the company out of business.
- 2011: Caddell & Chapman settled claims against the soils engineer for a $100 million, 31-story condominium tower on South Padre Island that earned the unenviable world record for the tallest reinforced-concrete structure ever imploded when, shortly after the building was “topped-out,” it began differentially settling into the sand, causing columns to blow out, severe structural cracking, and enormous floor deflection. The settlement occurred after Cynthia Chapman’s successful appellate briefing at the Texas Supreme Court and Michael Caddell’s voir dire and jury selection at trial.
- 2012: Caddell & Chapman led a group of four firms pursuing False Claims Act claims in a qui tam case against DaVita, the nation’s second-largest dialysis-treatment provider. During the course of the case, Caddell & Chapman took more than 40 depositions, reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, briefed dozens of motions-from discovery to four dispositive motions-and handled several fiercely contested hearings, and was victorious every time. The case settled for $55 million paid to the United States and a confidential amount for attorneys’ fees (which was disclosed to and approved by the U.S. Department of Justice). The recovery was the largest recovery for the United States in a qui tam case in which the Department of Justice declined to intervene.
- 2009: Michael Caddell served as lead counsel for the Park Memorial Homeowners’ Association against Lexington Insurance Company, seeking compensation for a 105-unit condominium project that had been declared uninhabitable by the City of Houston due to structural concerns. The case settled for a confidential amount-but only after we had successfully argued and prevailed over some 15 motions for summary judgment, Daubert motions, and motions in limine, and only one day before jury selection was to commence.
- 2008: The firm recovered $9 million in consent judgments after trial commenced in federal district court in McAllen, Texas, which judgments were paid in full plus interest at 8.25% following a contested evidentiary bankruptcy hearing in Jackson, Mississippi in January 2010 (the total paid recovery was $10,084,000).
- 2006: Caddell & Chapman completed a complex, hotly contested five-week trial against ExxonMobil in which the jury awarded Caddell & Chapman’s client $33.6 million -ultimately, rather than pursuing an appeal, Exxon Mobil settled the matter. Notably, ExxonMobil’s trial counsel at the time of trial was President-Elect of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
- 1999: Caddell & Chapman recovered $30 million for the families of 14 Maquiladora workers killed in a bus accident in Mexico after two weeks of trial and three unsuccessful mandamus efforts at the Texas Supreme Court brought by the victims’ employer, which was represented by two former Texas Supreme Court Justices and four different law firms.
- 1998: Caddell & Chapman obtained a $14.9 million verdict against Little Caesar Enterprises after a two-week trial in federal district court before Judge Ricardo Hinojosa, where our opponent was the lead name partner in Susman Godfrey, in a commercial case in which the pre-trial offer was zero, and defense counsel had the case on a reverse contingency (they worked for free if we recovered more than $50,000). The case settled after trial for a confidential amount.