Bricker, Nichols and Lawrence credit their current success to the firm’s supportive working environment
National plaintiffs’ firm Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel is honored to welcome three new partners to the firm. David Bricker and Dimitri N. Nichols office in the firm’s southern California location and Wm. Paul Lawrence, II practices in the firm’s Washington, D.C. area office.
Peter Kraus, founding partner and a leader in the field of mesothelioma litigation nationwide, boasts openly: “We are excited to have these three talented and accomplished trial lawyers join the firm as partners all in the same year. We feel both pride and gratitude in welcoming David, Dimitri and Paul as partners to the firm.”
Dimitri Nichols is the only one of the three partners to have joined the firm straight from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles in 2005. During his eight years with the firm, Mr. Nichols has devoted his practice to representing working families in mesothelioma cases brought against the asbestos and equipment companies that caused their injuries.
Describing the firm’s clients as “some of the best people in the world,” Mr. Nichols explains that he “couldn’t imagine representing anyone else. It may sound sort of crazy,” Mr. Nichols goes on, “but even as a kid, I envisioned myself someday working as a lawyer, suing multinational companies on behalf of those who are less powerful. The work we do at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel helps to level the playing field between American families and corporate giants. From the time I started working here, I knew it’s where I’d always belonged.”
David Bricker has practiced in California since 1992, devoting a significant portion of his career to representing catastrophically injured individuals with a special emphasis on injured children. Mr. Bricker’s many notable verdicts include multi-million dollar verdicts in favor of a man left paralyzed by the negligence of a hospital’s neurosurgeon and a child severely injured by the negligence of a hospital’s delivery room staff.
Since the time he joined Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel in 2010, Mr. Bricker has taken the lead in many successful jury trials on behalf of the firm’s mesothelioma clients. In addition,
Mr. Bricker represents families whose children suffer from birth injuries caused by their parents’ exposure to dangerous chemicals in the workplace. “For years I had focused on representing children in medical malpractice litigation,” says Mr. Bricker. “When Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel approached me about representing the children of semiconductor workers exposed to toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process, I could not pass up the opportunity to work with such an outstanding group of lawyers dedicated to helping working families who had no means of fighting for themselves.”
Concentrating on qui tam and class action litigation, Paul Lawrence works in the firm’s Washington, D.C. area office. Mr. Lawrence and Charles Siegel, who heads the firm’s appellate practice in Dallas, recently negotiated a $98 million settlement on behalf of Georgia utility customers who for decades were swindled out of “capital credits” they were owed but never paid by a Cobb County electric co-operative. “I feel incredibly fortunate to have found a law firm with sufficient financial resources and long term commitment to the cases to allow me to practice both class action and whistleblower litigation.”
Mr. Lawrence started his law career as a commercial litigator, but in 1998 took on his first False Claims Act case, representing a whistleblower suing on behalf of the U.S. government to recover taxpayer funds lost to a fraudulent scheme concocted by an unscrupulous government contractor. “For all of us working on qui tam litigation at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel, the cases make us feel good about what we are able to accomplish as lawyers — on behalf of our brave clients who are willing to take a stand when something’s not right and on behalf of our government, which faces enough fiscal challenges without adding false claims by government contractors, drug and device manufacturers, healthcare providers and others to the list.”
Though their backgrounds and practices are different, all three men credit their current success to the unique and supportive working environment fostered by the partnership at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel. According to Mr. Nichols, the youngest of the three incoming partners, new lawyers are given a surprising degree of responsibility at the firm, while at the same time receiving “phenomenal mentoring” from the name partners: Andy Waters; Peter Kraus; and Gary Paul. Mr. Bricker agrees: “From day one, I have been impressed by the quality and ability of the firm’s lawyers and by their commitment to doing the right thing to help our clients.” And Mr. Lawrence sums it up this way: “The lawyers at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel are not just fine attorneys, they are fine people. In my 37 years as a practicing lawyer, I’ve never been happier. That’s saying a lot.”
About Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel
Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel is a nationally recognized plaintiffs’ law firm concentrating on complex product liability and personal injury/wrongful death cases. The firm’s diverse practice includes toxic tort litigation such as asbestos and mesothelioma, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, as well as birth defects and other injuries caused by toxic chemical exposure and semiconductor chip manufacturing. The firm also represents plaintiffs in qui tam whistleblower matters. Based in Dallas, Texas, with offices in California and the Washington, D.C. area, Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel has participated in the representation of families from all fifty states and many foreign countries, as well as foreign governments.
