Plenary and Speaker
Information
americanbar.org/groups/litigation
2012 Fall Leadership
ABA Section of Litigation
Renaissance Grand St. Louis / St. Louis, MO
Learn more about the Section of Litigation at
americanbar.org/groups/litigation
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Glad You Met Us in St. Louis!
Welcome to the Fall Leadership Meeting! We are pleased that you have joined us for the meeting and today’s plenary session.
We are very grateful to a trio of great speakers for today’s presentation. On behalf of the Section of Litigation, we are proud to present this program: Baseball, A Governor & Successful Trial Strategies in High Profile Cases with outstanding trial lawyers Sam Adam, Jr., Rusty Hardin and moderator Hilarie Bass. A brief biography detailing the extraordinary experiences of each of the three is on the pages that follow.
We hope you enjoy this session and the remainder of the Fall Leadership meeting!
Sincerely,
William R. Bay
Nationally known trial lawyers Rusty Hardin, who pitched and
won an acquittal verdict for Roger Clemens, and Sam Adam, Jr.,
who defended Illinois Governor Blagojevich in his first trial, will
share their insights and trial tactics in these fascinating, high
profile cases that were both tried twice. Hilarie Bass, former chair
of the Section of Litigation, will moderate this panel.
Baseball, A Governor
& Successful Trial
Strategies in High
Profile Cases
Sam Adam, Jr., Speaker
Sam Adam, Jr. obtained both his undergraduate degree and Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin.
Mr. Adam led the first defense team that represented former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in his 2010 federal corruption trial. During that trial, the former governor was convicted on just one count, after the jury deadlocked on the remaining 23 counts. Mr. Adam—alongside of his father, Sam Adam, Sr.—also served as part of the legal defense team that successfully represented superstar R&B singer R. Kelly in his pornography trial.
Mr. Adam has earned a reputation for providing equally remarkable representation in both high profile and less noted cases. For example, he won acquittals in the following cases: armed robbery trial of Raul Eisman, murder trial of Melinda Goodman, murder trial of Joseph Biedermann, trial of Howard Morgan, and the murder trial of Robert Dianovsky. He also obtained a hung jury on 12 counts of attempted first-degree murder of police officers. Over the past decade, Mr. Adam has served as the defense lawyer for scores of other jury and bench trials resulting in not-guilty verdicts.
In 2011, Mr. Adam and Mr. Victor P. Henderson established Henderson Adam, LLC, a trial law firm. The firm specializes in four areas: personal injury and medical malpractice, civil rights, commercial litigation (also known as business litigation) as well as state and federal criminal defense, including white collar defense. Since opening, Henderson Adam, LLC has been hired to represent—among others—the families of two men who allegedly committed suicide at the notorious Area Two Police Station on the South Side of Chicago; Cook County Commissioner William Beavers, who is charged with federal tax fraud; and Illinois State Representative Derrick Smith, who has been charged by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald with accepting a bribe.
As a result of his success as a trial lawyer, Mr. Adam has made frequent appearances on local and national television and radio shows, including NBC, CBS, ABC and MSNBC. He has appeared as a guest on the Today show and is often written about and featured in newspaper articles and publications, including the Chicago Sun Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Magazine, the American Bar Association Journal and Uptown Magazine. Moreover, the National Trial Lawyers recently named him one of the top 100 trial lawyers in America.
Mr. Adam is happily married and has two small children.
Baseball, A Governor & Successful
Trial Strategies in High Profile Cases
Rusty Hardin, Speaker
Rusty Hardin is the name partner of his twelve-attorney firm in Houston, Texas. He has more than 37 years of litigation experience, having begun his career as an assistant district attorney for Harris County in 1975. He served as chief of one of the office’s felony divisions for eight years and was named Prosecutor of the Year in 1989. In 1991, Hardin moved into private practice, and he established Rusty Hardin & Associates in 1996.
The firm manages a wide variety of cases and appeals, focusing primarily on civil matters, including complex commercial litigation, contract disputes, and claims involving serious personal injury. The firm also engages in a substantial white collar criminal defense practice in both federal and state court. While an assistant district attorney, Hardin tried over 100 felony jury trials. Since entering private practice in 1991, he has tried over 70 jury trials, fairly evenly split between civil and criminal cases. His clients have been as varied as Arthur Andersen in both its civil and criminal cases; Dow Jones, for whom the firm won a new trial in the face of the largest libel verdict in history; the J. Howard Marshall II estate in the nationally-followed probate trial involving claims made by Anna Nicole Smith; ExxonMobil Corporation; Rice University; Las Vegas Sands; and a lengthy roster of professional athletes that includes Warren Moon, Rudy Tomjanovich, and Roger Clemens.
Hardin’s reputation and skill have led to numerous honors. He served as chief trial counsel for Independent Counsel Robert Fiske and his successor Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater investigation and is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). Since 2009, Hardin has served on the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee. Hardin was named one of “The 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter-Century” by Texas Lawyer in 2010. Additionally, he was ranked as one of the Top Ten “Super Lawyers” in the state by Texas Monthly for four consecutive years and was named by Texas Lawyer as a “Go-To Lawyer” for civil defense litigation in 2002 and commercial litigation in 2007. In 2011, Hardin received the Houston Press Readers’ Choice award for Best Lawyer in Houston, and in 2009, he received the Houston Press Readers’ Choice awards for Best Civil Attorney and Best Criminal Defense Attorney in Houston. Hardin has held a number of leadership positions on committees for the State Bar of Texas and has served on the faculty of numerous professional organizations. He is also a highly sought-after speaker for national and regional bar associations and business groups.
A native of North Carolina, Rusty received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and his J.D. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Hilarie Bass, Moderator
Hilarie Bass is the Global Chair - Practice Development and, until recently, national chair of the 600 member litigation department of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, an 1,800 lawyer general practice law firm with 33 worldwide offices. She also serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. She recently completed a one year term as Chair of the ABA’s 70,000 member Section of Litigation. Over her 30 year career, she has
Baseball, A Governor & Successful
Trial Strategies in High Profile Cases
Panel
successfully represented clients in scores of commercial cases in jury and nonjury trials involving millions of dollars in controversy.
As a trial lawyer, Ms. Bass serves as lead counsel of the Homebuilders Steering Committee in the MDL involving defective Chinese Drywall pending in New Orleans. As Chair of the HSC, Ms. Bass assisted in developing a protocol for the repair of homes with defective Chinese drywall, as well as negotiated settlements with Chinese drywall manufacturers and US suppliers, resulting in the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to assist in the cost of repairing the thousands of homes built with the defective Chinese drywall.
Ms. Bass recently represented, pro bono, two foster children seeking to be adopted by their gay parents. After a week long trial, the Judge found the statute barring gay adoption in Florida to be unconstitutional and the adoption was approved. This ruling, which was upheld by the Florida Appellate Court, overturned a long standing ban on gay adoption in the state of Florida, leading to a change in state policy which now bars questions about sexual orientation on adoption applications. As Chair of the ABA Section of Litigation, Ms. Bass worked with the Association of Corporate Counsel to develop a roundtable conference in which General Counsel’s and representatives from law firms throughout the country met to develop common approaches to such current issues as Alternative Fees, Fixed Fees, and other creative solutions to reduce the high cost of litigation. Additionally, she led a group of volunteer attorneys who visited Haiti for the purpose of training Haitian lawyers in basic trial advocacy skills. She also created a Task Force on Implicit Bias in the Justice System, which is responsible for training judges and bar groups about the existence of implicit bias in all of us and its impact on all participants in the justice system. She also oversaw the first redesign of the Litigation Magazine in its 38 year history, as well as the digitization of the Section’s multiple substantive newsletters.
Ms. Bass has also been active in bar work on national, state and local levels. She presently serves in the American Bar Association House of Delegates and was recently elected to serve as State Delegate for the State of Florida. She previously served a three-year term on the ABA Board of Governors and as Chair of the ABA Public Education and the Law Committee, the Meetings and Travel Committee, the Selection Committee of the ABA’s Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund and the Fund for Justice and Education, the ABA’s charitable foundation which funds in excess of $50 million per year for such programs as legal services for the poor, homelessness and domestic violence. Ms. Bass also served as one of 12 national members on the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. As a spokesman for the Public Education Committee, she appeared on numerous national and local radio and television broadcasts, including the Today Show and CNN, as part of a media tour for a series of consumer law books.
Ms. Bass grew up in Miami before graduating from the George Washington University in 1975 with a degree in political science, magna cum laude. She later returned to Miami to attend the University of Miami School of Law, where she graduated first in her class with a Juris Doctor degree in 1981 summa cum laude. Upon graduation from law school, she went to work for Greenberg Traurig, LLP, the firm she continues with today.
