Brent Coon is an American attorney and founder of Brent Coon & Associates. He worked on litigation that resulted from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. U.S. News & World Report named Beaumont-based Brent Coon & Associates a Best Law Firm of 2016.
Legal career
Texas City explosion
Following the Texas City Refinery explosion, Coon represented Eva Rowe, the daughter of Linda and James Rowe. Linda and James Rowe were among the 15 people who were killed in the refinery explosion. Brent Coon and Associates settled her lawsuit against British Petroleum for an undisclosed amount and $32 million in donations to health care, training, and safety education.
Brent Coon and Associates represented the estate of Crystle Rae Wise. She was one of four employees at DuPont who were killed on the job when deadly methyl mercaptan gas apparently leaked. Coon reached a settlement with DuPont for an undisclosed amount. Wise's family members donated part of the settlement in the amount of $100,000 to the Humane Society of Southeast Texas.
Twin Peaks Waco incident
Coon represented four Central Texas bikers arrested after the May 2015 Twin Peaks shootout in Waco. On May 8, 2017 a lawsuit seeking $1 billion in damages was filed in an Austin federal court.
Louisiana packaging facility explosion
Coon on April 25, 2017 filed a lawsuit of behalf of a father of one of the three workers killed in a Louisiana packaging facility explosion. He represented Joe Gooch, whose son Jody Gooch was killed in the explosion.
Coon was awarded Litigator of the Week by texaslawyer.com following his $7 million jury verdict against the Houston Independent School District over its failure to pay his contractor client for renovating six of its campuses on July 24. He helped defeat a $13 million contract counterclaim the school district lodged against his client and two other parties.
Controversies
Forgery in BP case
In 2013, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled that Coon had used a contract with a forged signature. The judge ruled that Coon use the signature to "assert that he represented a fisherman and was entitled to a cut of that man’s share of last year’s multibillion settlement with BP.” The judge told Coon that the signature he submitted does not match the signature on other documents that Coon’s client, Dien Nguyen, previously submitted to the court. Judge Barbier said he believed the signature was forged. Coon told Judge Barbier that he had never met Nguyen. Instead, a woman who works for Dailey’s paralegal signed up Nguyen. As a result, the judge barred Coon from receiving any funds in the Nguyen case against BP. Coon had partnered with an attorney, James J. Dailey in Alabama, who also claimed to have represented Nguyen. Judge Barbier issued the same decision against Dailey. "It is clear to me Mr. Dailey or Mr. Coon didn’t provide legal work entitling them to legal fees," Barbier said. According to the Houston Chronicle, "Barbier had ordered Coon to appear for a hearing in federal court in New Orleans to explain why his claim for a 25 percent cut of Nguyen’s expected compensation under the settlement with BP should not be denied." Previously, Coon said that thousands of BP oil spill clients had opted out of the mass settlement option offered by BP, instead choosing to pursue their own lawsuits. In November 2012, BP attorneys and lawyers for other plaintiffs told Judge Barbier that over 9,000 "opt-out documents were invalid because an attorney and not the client signed the request," according to SE Texas Record.
Coon represented Jack Hemmenway in his claim against the Deepwater Horizon Economic Claims Center for lost income from his small fleet of shrimp boats. Hemmenway overstated his income from one boat by $691,000. He told the claims center that he had accidentally reported net income instead of gross income to the IRS. The claims center was presented with an amended tax return for 2008 and a copy of a check to pay back taxes for $150,000. Based on these documents, the claims center issued a payment for $2,245,281 in March 2013. Investigators later discovered that the check for back taxes was never cashed and determined that the claim was fraudulent. Coon was forced to return a legal fee of $561,320 that was also paid by the claims center.
Asbestos-related racketeering and claim fraud
Coon admits to having Dr. Jay T. Segarra, a controversial radiologist from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, screen potential clients for asbestos-related injury. National Service Industries sued Segarra, numerous other physicians, testing labs, and attorneys for racketeering in 2009. There were several John Doe defendants in the suit that were described as lawyers or law firms. Forbes openly speculated that Coon and other prominent asbestos law firms such as Barron & Budd and Motley Rice were also defendants. Coon went so far as to publicly defend Segarra. NSI alleged that doctors and attorneys conspired to fraudulently produce false diagnoses of asbestos-related illnesses. Lawyers and doctors worked with labor unions to perform X-ray screenings, often in vans just outside work sites. These lawyer-sponsored screenings typically diagnosed asbestos-related disease in 50 to 60% of the patients screened. Similar fraud has been described in detail in the papers of Lester Brickman, a law professor at Cardozo and an expert on fraud and misconduct in asbestos litigation. Independent studies typically turn up disease in 30 to 40 workers out of 1,000. In 2016, Coon, along with several other Texas trial lawyers, was sued by Humana, United Healthcare, and Aetna and for failing to compensate them for medical care that was covered under asbestos injury settlements and judgments. By failing to reimburse the insurance companies Coon was able to secure double recovery for his clients while increasing the fees he earned. The plaintiffs were able to identify at least 297 such double recovery claims. The suit asked for $19.5 million.
Delinquent taxes
Five lawsuits for unpaid property taxes totaling $122,537 were filed against Coon and companies he controls by Jefferson County of Texas in 2011. Coon blamed his failure to pay on the failure of his tenants to pay rent and poor economic conditions.
American Express
American Express sued Coon's law firm for $170,818 owed on a past due credit card account in 2011. Coon settled the suit in late 2012.
Malpractice suit
Karen and Joseph Gauci filed suit against Coon and several other lawyers for malpractice stemming from their claims for economic damages from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The plaintiffs demanded $16 million. The suit alleged Coon and his associates "negligently failed to carry out their duties” by not filing and serving lawsuits in a timely manner. The complaint also said that Coon and his associates failed to disclose the true situation to the plaintiffs and lied to them about the effect of late filings on the value of their claims.
