A tale of two settlements

On May 7, Dallas-based Baron & Budd secured a $422 million settlement -- the largest ever involving a water pollution case -- for 153 public water providers. But the settlement has another Dallas firm interested in the result. Baron & Budd’s clients had sued various oil companies in what became federal multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of New York. Since 2003, Scott Summy, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, and five other Baron & Budd lawyers devoted almost all of their time and energy working the case, in which their clients accused the oil companies of contaminating drinking water with the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). “The damages we were suing for was the cost to take it out of the water supply before it was served to the public,” says Summy, who heads Baron & Budd’s water contamination group. In late 2003, Summy moved from Dallas-based Cooper & Scully to Baron & Budd. That same year Cooper & Scully sued Summy, a former shareholder, as well as Baron & Budd shareholders Russell Budd and Fred Baron, and their firm, alleging the defendants caused Cooper & Scully at least $14 million in damages after Baron & Budd hired Summy. Summy helped develop Cooper & Scully's environmental litigation practice, according to the third amended petition in Cooper & Scully v. Summy, et al. Cooper & Scully alleged that the defendants took possession of money from settlements that belong "to Cooper & Scully and have improperly withheld that money" – allegations the defendants denied. The parties in that case reached a confidential settlement on Jan. 27, 2006. “I got all of these cases after I left [Cooper & Scully]. These cases were not part of that dispute,” Summy says of the recent MTBE settlement. As for the Cooper & Scully litigation, Summy says: “That dispute was settled amicably. I wish them well. . . .”  But R. Brent Cooper, a partner in Cooper & Scully, notes, “All I can say is we saw the information on the New York settlement, and we are reviewing it in light of our settlement.”
--- John Council