Two former associates at Williams Kherkher opened the firm of Chandler McNulty in Houston on Feb. 1.
“So far, so good,” says Devin McNulty (pictured), who joined Troy Chandler in starting the firm.
McNulty adds, “I have every confidence that we’ll do well.”
Chandler says the firm will handle asbestos and toxic tort cases and will look at branching out into pharmaceutical injury cases.
McNulty says that he and Chandler (pictured) won a $20 million verdict in 2012 on behalf of a rape victim whom they represented in a premises liability suit in the 165th District Court. He says the apartment complex where the victim lived failed to notify residents that a rapist had committed sexual assaults at the complex before the assault at issue in the suit.
A confidential settlement was reached after the jury returned its verdict, Chandler says.
McNulty says the outcome of that premises liability suit probably had something to do with his and Chandler’s decision to open a firm.
“We’ve been pretty successful at trial,” McNulty says. “We thought we could start up our own firm and be our own bosses, select our own cases.”
Chandler says he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from high school and began his higher education after he left the Corps in 1991. He says he graduated from the University of Houston Law Center in 1998 and began his law career at Baron & Budd in Dallas shortly after graduation.
McNulty says he graduated from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in 2002 and began his law career in San Antonio as an assistant criminal district attorney in the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney’s Office. He says that in 2006-2007 he taught law at Universidad de Guanajuato, in Guanajuato, Mexico. He also serves as a municipal judge for the city of Houston, McNulty says.
McNulty says that as business dictates, he and Chandler would like to hire additional attorneys.
“But for right now, it’s just the two of us,” McNulty says.
— Mary Alice Robbins
Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.
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