Originally from Sarita, Texas, Roger S. Braugh, Jr. received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1992. He graduated from Baylor University School of Law in 1996 with honors, having been Editor in Chief of the Baylor Law Review and a member of Baylor's trial and appellate advocacy teams. Mr. Braugh then worked for Henry A. Politz, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, for one year prior to entering private practice. Thereafter, Mr. Braugh joined Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P in Houston, Texas, focusing his practice on defense of toxic tort, product liability, and workplace accident cases. He began prosecuting, as opposed to defending, cases for clients in 1999 when he joined Mikal Watt's law firm in Corpus Christi, Texas. Thereafter, he became a named partner at his own firm in 2002.
Mr. Braugh is an "AV" rated lawyer admitted to practice before all State and Federal courts in Texas. He has handled complex cases arising in many states, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and has handled cases arising in Mexico, South America and the Persian Gulf.
Mr. Braugh is nationally-recognized for his work in tire defect, rollover, and automotive defect litigation, being one of the lawyers who initially discovered and broke the news of the silent recalls of the Ford Explorer and its Firestone tires in South America and Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2000. His involvement in the Firestone tire/Ford Explorer litigation has been chronicled in national publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, the Detroit News, and on nationally televised programs such as MSNBC.
In Rose Munoz v. Ford Motor Co., Mr. Braugh obtained the first jury verdict in the nation involving the notorious combination of Ford Explorers and Firestone ATX or Wilderness AT tires that claimed the lives of 200 people & injured hundreds more. The
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landmark $29,500,000.00 jury verdict not only established that a handling and stability defect exists in over four million Ford Explorers, but also held Ford liable for failing to warn of the hazard of a growing safety epidemic--tire aging. Prior to the Munoz case, the U.S. automotive and tire industry had denied that aged tires presented any hazard to consumers, but during the course of the Munoz case, Ford Motor Company finally agreed to begin warning about tire aging. Other U.S. automotive and tire companies then began to provide consumer information on tire age limits.
Mr. Braugh obtained a $34,000,000.00 jury verdict in Ibarra v. LG Electronics for a single fatality in a home fire caused by a defective window air conditioning unit. The Ibarra case exposed the hazards of an Underwriters Laboratory (UL) program that allowed foreign manufacturers, such as Korean conglomerate LG Electronics, to self-certify compliance with UL standards, with little to no oversight, and place the UL gold seal of approval on products exported to the United States, despite the fact that the product failed to actually meet UL's listing standards.
Mr. Braugh's other multimillion-dollar verdicts include cases involving oilfield equipment, trucking negligence, premises liability, and defective industrial equipment. His settlements have included a $25,000,000 settlement in an automotive product defect case involving paralysis, an $11,500,000 settlement in a tire defect multiple injury case, a $10,000,000 settlement in a single injury vehicle rollover case, a $9,200,000 settlement in a single fatality product defect case, an $8,400,000 settlement in a single injury automotive restraint defect case, and an $8,000,000 settlement in tire defect single fatality case.
Mr. Braugh's trial verdicts exceed $85,000,000.00, with combined total verdicts and settlements exceeding $350,000,000.00 in individual cases for his clients. His practice includes cases involving automotive and tire defects, trucking accidents, general product liability, negligence and premises liability, commercial and other business litigation, and oil and gas litigation on behalf of both corporate clients and individual landowners.
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