Tony Buzbee - Defining Moments

tony buzbee

Defining momentS

by

michael lee lanning

john M. hardy publishing

houston, texas

###

Copyright © 2014

Michael Lee Lanning

All Rights Reserved.

Tony Buzbee

Defining Moments

First Printed 2014

ISBN 978-1-946182-05-0

ePub - Aug 2019

Printed in the United States of America

Includes bibliographical references and index

John M. Hardy Publishing

Houston, Texas

www.johnhardypublishing.com

Dedication

To the all the young men and women struggling to break away from the confinement of their birth places who have visions of seeing the world, accomplishing great things, and achieving wealth and fame.

Books by Michael Lee Lanning

The Only War We Had: A Platoon Leader’s Journal of Vietnam

Vietnam 1969-1970: A Company Commander’s Journal

Inside the LRRPs: Rangers in Vietnam

Inside Force Recon: Recon Marines in Vietnam

(with Ray W. Stubbe)

The Battles of Peace

Inside the VC and NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam’s Armed Forces (with Dan Cragg)

Vietnam at the Movies

Senseless Secrets: The Failures of U.S. Military Intelligence

From George Washington to the Present

The Military 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Military

Leaders of All Time

The African-American Soldier: From Crispus Attucks

to Colin Powell

Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam

Defenders of Liberty: African-Americans in the

Revolutionary War

Blood Warriors: American Military Elites

The Battle 100: The Stories Behind History’s Most

Influential Battles

Mercenaries: Soldiers of Fortune, From Ancient Greece

to Today’s Private Military Companies

The Civil War 100: The Stories Behind the Most Influential ­Battles,

People, and Events in the War Between the States.

The Revolutionary War 100: The Stories Behind the Most ­Influential

Battles, People, and Events of the American Revolution

Double T Double Cross: The Firing of Coach Mike Leach

At War With Cancer (with Linda Moore-Lanning)

Tours of Duty: Vietnam War Stories

Tony Buzbee: Defining Moments

Texas Aggies in Vietnam: War Stories

Double T Double Cross Double Take: Epilogue to

The Firing of Coach Mike Leach

The Veterans Cemeteries of Texas

Contents

Galveston Federal Building

Defining Moments

USMC and Law School

Trial Lawyer—the Early Years

In the Arena

It’s in the Box: Taking on the Ford Motor Company

The Buzbee Way

BP

FEMA and Texas Windstorm

Children

Outside Texas

Closer to Home

Famous and Infamous

Day to Day

Buzbee: Pro and Con

At Home and Play

Conclusions and the Future

Afterword

Sources

About the Author

Chapter 1

Galveston Federal Building

…maybe I can do somethin’…maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it…. I’ll be around in the dark—I’ll be ever’where you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and live in the houses they built—I’ll be there.

—Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

On December 18, 2009, people hurried from all directions up the courthouse steps. The word was out that the jury was in and that they had a verdict.

The Galveston Texas Federal Building, an Art Deco structure built in 1937 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, stands prominently on 25th Street between the town’s main thoroughfare Broadway and the island’s famous Strand District. It houses a U. S. Post Office on its ground floor and federal offices and courtrooms on its upper levels. On this Friday morning the sidewalks surrounding the building still had lingering moisture from rain showers over the past few days even though the new day was clear with temperatures predicted to rise to the mid-60s —one of those kind of winter days that Galvestonians brag about.

Of particular interest on this day, however, was not the architecture or weather but rather the activities inside the sixth floor courtroom of the building where a U. S. District Court, Southern District Court of Texas jury, after a day and a half of deliberation, was just returning with its verdict in the three-week long trial. At issue were the injury of 10 employees and the liability of employer BP, the world’s third largest oil company.

Soon awaiting the jury’s arrival back into the courtroom were the judge, the attorneys for both sides, the plaintiffs, the press, and curious onlookers. Absent, though, was the man who had orchestrated the trial, the man who had faced corporate foes many times before while protecting the rights of the workers and winning them millions of dollars in judgments, the man whose presence was palatable even though he was not there. That man was Tony Buzbee, attorney for seven of the plaintiffs and lead counsel for all.

Tony Buzbee was not there because he does not attend verdict readings. He believes his work on a case is complete when he delivers his final arguments. So, he sends a representative who will immediately let him know the outcome instead of placing his practice on hold while juries debate. By the time a verdict has been reached, Buzbee is already focusing his energies and concentration on his next case—just as he had done when he began work on the trial concluding that December morning, one that had begun back in April 2007 with the release of unidentified toxins into the air from the BP Texas City refinery.

Prior to this trial, the 40-year-old Houston attorney had already obtained hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements with BP and other corporations. His flamboyant courtroom victories and his confidential closed-door settlements had allowed Buzbee to move his initial offices in Friendswood to first Galveston and then into the tallest high rise in Texas located in downtown Houston. His record had also allowed him justification for his winning is the only option attitude and signature motifs: cowboy boots in the courtroom and shark emblems everywhere, including shark logos on the tail of his planes and on the back of his 100-foot-plus yacht, sharks stitched onto his boots and fashioned into door handles throughout his offices. Tony Buzbee is a man who makes and then leaves his mark wherever he goes—especially in the courtroom.

The trial had been as simple as it was outrageous. During the evening of April 19, 2007, the 10 plaintiffs, along with more than 100 other workers, were exposed to, and injured by, unidentified toxic substances released into the air. The suit claimed that BP had failed to properly maintain the refinery, had failed to warn the workers of the leaking chemicals, and furthermore had established a pattern of negligence at the plant dating back more than a decade. Throughout the trial Buzbee emphasized that BP put profits over the environment, profits over safety, profits over people.

During the jury trial, Buzbee highlighted examples of BP’s placing stockholder dividends before employee safety. As background, he noted that during the five years prior to the trial, more than 500 releases, spills, leaks, and other events had occurred at the Texas City refinery from faulty or worn out valves, pumps, and connectors. Of these, more than 45 emissions exceeded the lawful pollutant emissions standards. A former BP fire chief testified that the refinery averaged one fire per week. About 70 percent of the odor events at the refinery were not even investigated nor were their sources ever discovered by BP. Finally, Buzbee noted that BP had been cited by the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for hundreds of willful and egregious violations related to safety deficiencies at the refinery in just the past few months.

Trial evidence showed that more than 100 workers, including the 10 plaintiffs, were sent to the hospital with dizziness and sore throats after the gas leak on April 19. One worker passed out from the fumes. Hospital records confirmed that the workers had been exposed to toxic materials and industry experts confirmed that a leak had occurred. Buzbee stated that he had one of worker’s gas masks tested and found carbon disulfide—a colorless, toxic liquid—in its filters.

BP lawyers countered by repeatedly denying that a leak had ever occurred. When they saw that this was not being accepted by the jury, they began claiming that the leak must have come from one of the other huge refineries in Texas City or those located along the Houston Ship Channel. The BP lawyers, however, could not identify the source of the toxic leak nor could they explain why no other refinery in the area had reported a toxic emission. BP went so far as to suggest to the press that the entire incident might be a hoax by disgruntled workers.

BP lawyers asked three times for Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt to dismiss the case. Three times he refused to do so.

Buzbee asked the jury to award the plaintiffs with 1% of BP Products North America’s net worth of an estimated $3.9 billion, or one month of the profits from the Texas City plant, estimated to be about $100 million.

In his instructions to them before their deliberation, Judge Hoyt told the jury that in addition to actual damages (medical expenses, etc.), if they found that BP’s conduct was so shocking and offensive as to justify an award of punitive damages, it should consider such an award.

Finally, on December 18, 2009, the jury slowly made their way into the courtroom and delivered their decision. They found in favor of the plaintiffs and fixed actual damages to the 10 workers, ranging from $5,918 to $244,386 each, for a total of $325,536 plus $14,184 in prejudgment interest. Each of the workers was also to receive $10 million in punitive damages. It was one of the largest verdicts of the year in the United States and the largest ever against BP at the time. The National Law Journal listed it as one of the top verdicts in the United States in 2009.

Upon hearing the verdict, Buzbee’s representative called his boss to inform him about the verdict and the monetary award. Buzbee was soon deluged with phone calls and emails from local, national, and international media representatives. The news people also rushed for statements from BP. BP responded with a brief statement by company spokesman Ronnie Chappell: We are shocked and outraged by today’s verdict, and we will appeal. We believe the evidence showed that BP did not cause harm to anyone on April 19, 2007. The verdict, and punitive damages award in particular, is utterly unjustified, improper, and unsupportable.

Buzbee, on the other hand, said that his clients were pleased with the decision. He admitted to reporters that, before the trial, he had offered BP a settlement of $10,000 per worker. BP had countered at $500 each. Buzbee said that he was very happy that they got hit for $100 million. He added that he did not think the 10 plaintiffs or the others he would be representing in future trials would likely suffer from long-term effects of the toxic emission. The importance of the trial and verdict was to expose the lax safety practices at BP. It was important to get the company to change their procedures before more of their employees were injured or killed.

Buzbee said, The verdict adds to the dangerous and deadly legacy of BP’s Texas City plant. The jury recognized the safety problems at the plant and BP’s efforts to discredit the workers. BP can claim to be ‘outraged’ by the jury’s unanimous verdict, but the company’s safety record in Texas City is abysmal. Serious questions persist about BP’s commitment to workplace safety. The fact is, far too many workers have been killed or injured at that plant.

In an interview with yourhoustonnews.com, Buzbee said, We want all companies to profit. That means jobs for the community. But you’ve got to take some of that profit and reinvest it in the plant to prevent injuries, death, and pollution—and BP was not doing that. The hope is that this verdict will make them reassess how they do business.

To the Associated Press, he said, My point to the jury was that BP had not changed, not turned the corner, and if you don’t do something about this, no one will.

BP followed up on their promise of appeal, and on March 16, 2010, succeeded in getting Judge Hoyt to set aside the huge judgment. The judge stated that, while the jury’s finding that BP was responsible for the toxic leak by a preponderance of evidence, there was no specific intent by BP to cause harm. He added that the injured workers also assumed some risk by working in the plant.

BP was, of course, pleased with the decision. Spokesman Scott Dean said to a Galveston Daily News reporter, We agree with the court’s decision to set aside the punitive damage award. Having said that, we continue to believe that the evidence in the case did not warrant a finding against the company in any amount and that we have solid legal grounds for an appeal.

The continuing denial by BP of any responsibility was for good reason. The company’s officials were well aware that Tony Buzbee and other law firms still represented more than an additional one hundred victims of the refinery leak. With trials of 10 plaintiffs at a time, the cases could take years, if not decades, and cost as much in legal fees as any potential judgments.

This opinion was only reinforced by Buzbee’s reaction to the judge’s decision. Buzbee questioned how a one-paragraph judge’s decision could negate a 12-person jury decision. He said, The judge acknowledges that BP is a bad actor, but, for whatever reason, decides that a jury who hears three weeks of evidence should be ignored, and takes away the ability of the ordinary folks to fight back.

Buzbee noted to the Daily News that he was already preparing for the trial of the next 10 victims and promised to fight on, saying the judge’s ruling was only one battle in a long war.

The statements by both sides were aimed as much at each other as for the press and public. BP knew that one jury had found them responsible for the release and the resulting injuries to its employees and had awarded them more than a $100 million. Although the judge had ruled BP not to be grossly negligent and set aside most of the jury’s judgment amount, he had upheld the award for actual damages for medical expenses, lost income, and mental anguish. Both BP and Buzbee knew that additional trials might produce different outcomes and even higher judgments.

It was time to negotiate. This time BP was not offering $500 per plaintiff. Buzbee, with the jury’s verdict in hand, was not going to settle for $10,000 per worker. Buzbee, who seems to take center stage and dominate any courtroom, is even more at home in direct negotiations. Fellow lawyers describe the U.S. Marine-turned- attorney’s style as take no prisoners and a flamethrower attached to a bull dozer. On the other side, BP had a bevy of top defense lawyers on retainer who were neither prepared nor willing to take on a series of battles in a long war. Buzbee held the advantage and knew it.

The content of the negotiations and their results, by agreement of both parties, remain confidential—typical of such settlements. What is known is that the ordinary workers at BP were awarded what has been called substantial and large payments. Buzbee returned to his 73rd floor offices with a hefty check of his own.

World reporters and business men watched the trial with great interest because global commerce, and thus the economy, is greatly influenced by petroleum production and its refining into usable products. The BP trial verdict and later confidential settlements shook the oil industry and elevated the Galveston attorney into the ranks of best known and highest compensated lawyers in America—and beyond. More importantly, Buzbee enhanced and broadened his own reputation as the representative and protector of ordinary workers—the underdogs and the little guys. He elevated his opus of being a lawyer who is everywhere, wherever you can look—one not afraid to stand up against big oil, or big business, or big corporations, or even big governments.

Chapter 2

Defining Moments

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

—The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Tony Buzbee is not the scion of some wealthy, privileged New England or East Coast family who came to Texas to make his fortune. Nor is he a graduate of an Ivy League law school. He is a Texan—born, raised, educated.

It is impossible to determine what a person himself has become and what he on his own has achieved without looking at where he is from. Tony Buzbee began his life in Cass County located in the northeast corner of Texas about ten miles west of the tri-border area where Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas meet and about 40 miles south of Oklahoma.

Cass County comprises 937 square miles of the East Texas timberlands with elevations above sea level varying from 200 to 632 feet. The forest contains a mixture of pine—harvested for pulp—and hardwoods, such as cypress and oak, used for building materials. Less than 30 percent of the county is considered adequate for farming. Beneath the county’s surface are somewhat limited mineral resources of industrial sand, ceramic clay, granite, oil, gas, lignite coal and iron.

Caddo Indians, Native Americans adept in agriculture, occupied the land for centuries before being pushed out by the more aggressive Kickapoo, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes in the 1820s. Several French, Spanish, and English explorers crossed the timberlands of what was to become Cass County in these early years, but none tarried for any length of time nor made any mark on the land. Members of these the three tribes, at least those who did not die of disease, were, in turn, driven westward by the arrival of the first permanent Europeans in the mid-1830s when Texas was still a colony of Mexico.

Settlers from the United States, mostly Georgia cotton farmers looking for fresh land, were spread out across the area by 1840. Some brought along with them their slaves, the first black residents of the county. A few of the pioneers arrived in time to join the battles for Texas independence in 1836. A year after Texas joined the United States in 1845, the new state government formally recognized Cass County, a name taken from Lewis Cass, a U.S. senator from Michigan who had supported the annexation of Texas into the Union.

Over the next 15 years, Cass County was reconfigured as more settlers moved into the region and the boundaries of the country were redrawn to form additional counties. By 1860 Cass County had its borders that remain today.

The secession movement in the winter of 1860-1861 caused much consternation in Cass County as it did all across the South and the United States. With black slaves making up more than 41 percent of the county’s population and representing 60 percent of its entire taxable property, there was no doubt that the county would support secession. Citizens voted to do so by a margin of more than ten to one.

In addition to joining Texas in the Confederacy, Cass County also changed its name. Lewis Cass, now the Secretary of State and a former friend to those who believed in states’ rights, resigned his position in protest of the U.S. not taking aggressive action to defend its federal forts in the South. Cass County responded by changing its name to Davis County in honor of the president of the Confederate States.

The residents of the newly named county supported the Confederacy during the war but there are no figures of the actual number of men it sent off to battle. No combat took place in the county, but the war was hard on its citizens because of the lack of markets for their cotton. The end of the war brought even more hardships with the freeing of their slaves and the removal of their pro-Southern elected officials by the occupying Reconstruction government. The Texas state legislature, dominated by Reconstruction Republicans, changed the name of the county back to Cass in 1871.

Exports from, and imports into, the county in the early years went through nearby Jefferson located on the Big Cypress Bayou connecting it to Caddo Lake and onto the Red and Mississippi Rivers. A 100-mile long log jam north of present Natchitoches, Louisiana—said by the Indians to have always been there—raised the water level allowing river boat traffic. From its establishment in 1845 until 1872, Jefferson reigned as one of the most important ports in Texas. This ended in 1873 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used the newly developed explosive nitroglycerin to clear the log raft from the Red River. Water levels went down, riverboat traffic was no longer possible, and Jefferson began to decline.

Fortunately for the commercial interests of Northeast Texas, railroads reached the area about the same time river traffic was no longer feasible. The Texas and Pacific Railway was constructed across eastern Cass County in 1873 and the East Line and Red River Railroad made its way across the southwestern part of the county three years later.

The primary land transportation route in the county is U.S. Highway 59 that extends from Laredo on the Rio Grande through Houston and Texarkana and on out of state. Completed in the 1940s, Highway 59 continues to be widened and updated as traffic increases.

In the 1960s, the Highway 59 Bypass was completed around the western side of Atlanta—Cass County’s largest town. Today the sides of the Bypass are filled with national companies selling tires, general merchandise, and fast food. Mixed in are independent restaurants serving Bar-B-Que, catfish, and Mexican food. The strip also hosts most of the town’s motels, including one that has a bulletin board of the pictures and names of more than two dozen Cass County natives currently serving in the armed forces.

The highway and railroads provide consistent, accessible, and reasonable avenues for the residents of Cass County to get their products to market. The fortune of the county followed that of the rest of the state and country over the next decades. Droughts, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the world wars drove the various ups and down turns in the local economy. Discovery of petroleum in the county in the 1930s in what was known as the Rodessa oilfield brought some immediate wealth to the local land owners, but the field’s production has steadily decreased over the years.

Farming remained the largest influence for years on the economy, but by the 1980s cotton had faded from the scene because of depleted land nutrients, government controls, and insect invasions. Today the primary agricultural products in the county are cattle, poultry, watermelons, and nursery plants. Many farmers, especially tenant farmers, left the land for jobs at the Lone Star Steel Mill in Morris County and at the Red River Arsenal and Lone Star Ammunition Plant in Bowie County. Others commuted to the Cooper Tire Manufacturing plant in Texarkana and to other manufacturing jobs in Arkansas and Louisiana. The lumber industry has remained fairly consistent over the years and still produces a sizeable amount of soft and hardwoods as well as the jobs to harvest, transport, and process the timber.

This is the land and history into which Tony Buzbee was born. As he entered his formative teen years in 1981, the per-capita income for Cass County was $7,457 annually, ranking it 218th of Texas’ 254 counties in income. Nearby Bowie County ranked 139th with a per-capita income of $9,065 while Morris County ranked 29th with $11,602 per annum.

The population of Cass County has remained fairly steady over the past decades. According to the 2000 census, the county had 30,438 residents—78% Anglo, 20% black, and 2% Hispanic.

Since its founding, Cass County politics and elections have been dominated by the Democrat Party. It was not until 1972 that Republican voters outnumbered Democrats in the presidential election. Since that time loyalty to the two parties had shifted back and forth. The Republicans have prevailed in the last two national campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

Only four towns in Cass County have a population of more than 1,000. Hughes Springs—named for its founder Reece Hughes—near the southwestern border of the county is the oldest, having been established in the 1830s near flowing mineral springs. Its population today is 1,856. Linden, located in the southern part of the county and named for its founder’s home in Tennessee, became the county seat in 1848; it has a current population of 2,256. Atlanta, springing up along the route of the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1871 and taking the name of many of its residents’ original home in Georgia, is the county’s largest with 5,745. Queen City, adjacent to Atlanta on the north, was founded in 1877 and now has 1,613 people. Many of the early residents wanted to name the village Marietta after their former Georgia home. Town promoters, however, thought the name Queen City would bring more attention and immigrants, and so it became. Today, Queen City and Atlanta have grown together with only a few signs designating their borders. The high schools of the two towns are only a mile apart.

Over the years Cass County has produced its share of notable characters. Elizabeth Bessie Coleman was born to Atlanta share croppers in 1892 and went on to become the first American black female pilot and the first African American to hold an international pilot’s license. She died in an air crash in 1924.

Others born in Cass County moved on to other places to earn their fame. Country singer Tracy Lawrence was born in Atlanta in 1968 before moving as a child to Arkansas. Legendary composer Scott Joplin was born in Linden in the 1860s and led a band in Queen City known as the Queen City Troupe before moving on to New York and international fame.

Still others were born elsewhere but spent important years in Cass County. Pioneer radio broadcaster Gordon McLendon was born in Paris, Texas, in 1921 but moved to Atlanta for high school. He named one of his projects to beam radio shows from off shore stations to the United Kingdom Radio Atlanta, a moniker he did not define and few knew the real origins. Comedian and television talk show host Ellen DeGeneres was born in Louisiana but moved from New Orleans to Atlanta where she graduated from high school.

Don Henley, singer, song writer and drummer for the Eagles, was born in Gilmer but went to school in Linden. He maintains contact with his old home town and contributed generously to the refurbishing of the Cass County Courthouse, the oldest continually operating courthouse in the state.

Cass County has also produced other successful, but not so famous, professional athletes, military leaders, and entertainers. Perhaps its saddest claim to fame is John O’Neal Rucker who was born in Kilgore in 1951 but was raised in Linden. Rucker, a member of the U.S. Air Force, was killed in a rocket attack against the Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam on January 27, 1973 just hours before the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. He was the last American killed in the long conflict.

Anthony G. Buzbee was born in Atlanta to Glenn and Patti Buzbee on June 22, 1968. That was a major event for the Buzbees, but overall it was a quiet, not particularly historic day across the rest of the United States. No famous American shares Buzbee’s birthday, and the only death of anyone well-known on that day was David O. Selznick, the producer of the film Gone With the Wind.

Glenn Buzbee claims to be at least a fifth generation native of the area and says, Buzbees have been in Cass County for as long as anyone can remember. Glenn graduated from Queen City High School with ambitions of becoming a veterinarian. He briefly attended Texarkana Junior College but dropped out when he discovered alcohol and girls—and the need for money to get both.

The Buzbees are not for sure of their genealogical linage but they do know about several colorful relatives. Robert J. Buzbee, Glenn’s father, worked for the WPA during the Depression and was a farmer. Robert A. Anthony, Glenn’s grandfather was also a farmer, but was better known for killing his nephew who was terrorizing the rest of the family.