The gala titled, “Celebrating Five Years of Fighting for Freedom,” recognizes the accomplishments of the organization – particularly the exoneration over the past five years of five Tennesseans wrongly imprisoned in the state, some for decades.

Exoneree Wayne Burgess, pictured here being recognized at the TIP gala, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1999 for the death of his girlfriend’s baby. He spent more than 20 years in a rural Tennessee prison for a crime he did not commit. After more than a year of diligent work by TIP attorneys, the conviction was overturned and vacated on April 13, 2023.

Founded in 2019, TIP is the first full-time innocence organization in the state, and represents individuals making claims of innocence with three focus areas: investigating and litigating actual innocence claims; training law students and attorneys to litigate these specialized claims and to learn processes around prevention; and effectuating change around the origin of wrongful convictions.

“Tennessee Innocence Project does important work to get justice for the wrongly accused,” Chalos said. “We are proud to support this organization.”

About Lieff Cabraser’s Nashville Office

Along with national work, the Nashville office of national plaintiffs’ firm Lieff Cabraser handles impact cases throughout Tennessee and the South, including litigation relating to fraud on the government, civil rights, employment rights, environmental harm, antitrust, and personal injury/mass tort cases.

According to the complaint, named plaintiff Anthony Hickey suffered multiple serious injuries during his time at CoreCivic-run Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, including a crushed left hip and femur. After each injury, Hickey claims correctional officers denied his requests for care, waiting days and sometimes even months before getting him the help he so desperately needed.

The Post’s report included an interview with Lieff Cabraser partner Christoper E. Coleman, lead attorney on the case.

“They have a practice or policy of chronically understaffing Trousdale with the obvious result that people are not able to get the medical care they need” Coleman said. “Whether this is deliberate neglect or simply they’re just stretched so thin with a tiny staff and lots of prisoners that they can’t do it. Either way, they’re not fulfilling their obligations under the Constitution.”

To read the full report visit The Nashville Post website.

January 17, 2023, San Francisco–(BUSINESSWIRE)–On January 13, 2023, Lieff Cabraser, Equal Justice Society, and Serna & Associates PLLC filed a federal injury lawsuit in the Central District of California on behalf of plaintiff Tamara Bryant alleging that Ms. Bryant’s uterine cancer was directly and proximately caused by her regular and recurrent use of hair relaxer products created by L’Oreal, Soft Sheen-Carson, Dermoviva Skin Essentials, Dabur International, Namaste Laboratories, Strength of Nature, and Godrej Son Holdings. The lawsuit brings claims arising from defendants’ negligent, willful, and wrongful conduct in connection with the design, development, manufacture, testing, packaging, promoting, marketing, distribution, labeling, and/or sale of the products known as Dark & Lovely, OS Olive Oil Relaxer, Just for Me, and African Pride.

In 2020, the global Black Hair care market was estimated at $2.5 billion, with the hair relaxer market alone estimated at $718 million in 2021. It is estimated that as many as 90% of Black women in the United States have used relaxer products. Unfortunately, in October 2022, the National Institutes of Health published a study showing a connection between hair relaxer usage and uterine cancer, with even higher cancer rates if relaxers were used frequently (i.e., four or more times/year). This follows other studies which have raised concerns about the toxicity of ingredients in hair relaxers. The non-partisan Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that hair relaxers are among the worst-scoring of over 1,100 beauty products on EWG’s Skin Deep® Cosmetics Database, a resource for finding less-hazardous alternatives to personal care products.

Historical context: As noted in the complaint, in its natural or untreated state, Black or “afro-textured” hair is characterized by coils, zigzag, and s-curve curl patterns, as well as density and fullness. In Africa, hair was seen as a source of personal and spiritual power. One of the first things American slave masters did to enslaved people was to cut their hair. This was a way to “break their spirit and make slaves easier to control.” Going back to the time of chattel slavery, white Americans came to see African or Black hair as something to be hidden, animalistic, or ugly, with the idea that “good hair” is equated with a straighter hair texture and that straighter hair connoted a superior character. Thus, “the texture of an enslaved person’s hair could determine their value and working conditions, which in turn might impact their overall health, comfort and chances for freedom[.]”

Black men and women internalized the understanding that the straighter and less kinky their hair was, the better a life they could have, which fueled the desire for hair straightening tools and products. This legacy of American slavery and its relationship to Black hair continues to this day, as natural Black hair is still subject to social stigma in many quarters and necessitates the passage of laws protecting employees and others from mistreatment due to having a natural hairstyle.

This industry of cancer-causing products is another insidious part of a much larger crisis killing and harming Black women. Black women are four times more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women irrespective of income and education levels. Newborn babies of Black women are three times more likely to die when looked after by white doctors. Black women experience vastly higher rates of many preventable diseases and chronic health conditions including diabetes, hypertension, fibroids, and cardiovascular disease. Additionally, because of the use of hair relaxers marketed aggressively to Black women and the pressure to assimilate to racist respectability and beauty norms, Black women are twice as likely to develop uterine cancer, one of the deadliest forms of this disease.

Plaintiff

Plaintiff Tamara Bryant is a resident of Los Angeles, California. As detailed in the complaint, Ms. Bryant was first exposed to EDCs and/or phthalate-based hair relaxer products around 1998, when she was approximately 14 years old. Ms. Bryant continued using these products from 1998 to 2014 approximately twice a month. There was never any warning or labeling on the Products that normal use of the Products could cause her to develop cancer. Ms. Bryant was diagnosed with uterine cancer after a miscarriage she had on December 12, 2016 while in a hospital emergency room.

Ms. Bryant required immediate medical attention to remove her fallopian tubes and the cancer to prevent the cancer from metastasizing. In January 2017 she underwent surgery for removal of her fallopian tubes and the related cancer. Ms. Bryant has had to have follow-up tests performed each year to ensure the cancer does not return. As a result of Defendants’ acts and omissions, Ms. Bryant has suffered extreme pain and suffering and emotional distress, substantial impairments to her quality of life, outlook, and plans for the future, and monetary losses.

Statements

“We urgently need to shine a light on and reverse the devastating health outcomes suffered by Black women, who have been targeted for too long by manufacturers of unsafe products,” said Lisa Holder, President of the Equal Justice Society and counsel for Ms. Bryant and her family. “This case is just one part of a much larger issue of bias with dire environmental and health consequences for Black women.”

“For too long, Black women like our client have been targeted for dangerous products,” said Kelly Dermody of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. “We seek to vindicate Ms. Bryant’s rights to the fullest extent to ensure that hair relaxer companies no longer consider it acceptable to expose Black women and other women of color to the horrific health risks our client has suffered.”

“This is a multi-generational injustice whose breadth is only now being fully exposed,” notes Serna & Associates PLLC partner Enrique Serna, who also represents Ms. Bryant. “We look forward to Ms. Bryant having her day in court.”

Claims

The lawsuit asserts claims for strict liability, failure to warn, design and/or manufacturing defects, false advertising, fraud, fraudulent concealment, breach of express and implied warranties, negligence, gross negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and negligent failure to recall, as well as violations of the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act, and seeks compensatory damages, economic damages in the form of medical expenses, and punitive and/or exemplary damages for defendants’ wanton, willful, fraudulent, and reckless acts which demonstrated a complete disregard for the safety and welfare of the general public and Plaintiff.

For more information, visit our Uterine Cancer from Hair Relaxers case page.

Media Source/Contact

John Gersten (Media contact)
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP
415 956-1000
media@lchb.com

Lisa Holder
President, Equal Justice Society
415-288-8717
media@equaljusticesociety.org

Nashville, September 19, 2022–(BusinessWire)–Jackson, Mississippi residents represented by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, the Law Office of Larry D. Moffett, PLLC, Kershaw Talley Barlow, P.C., and Gibbs Travis PLLC filed the first federal class action lawsuit seeking injunctive relief and monetary damages against various government and private engineering defendants over the neglect, mismanagement, and maintenance failures that led to an environmental catastrophe leaving over 153,000 Jackson-area residents without access to safe running water. The Complaint in the case was filed in the Southern District of Mississippi.

“We are striving to secure clean, safe water for the Jackson community – a community that has been suffering with contaminated water for years,” stated Gibbs Travis partner Robert Gibbs, who represents the Plaintiffs in the suit. “This is a righteous fight, and one we intend to win.”

“All families are entitled to clean and safe drinking water,” said Lieff Cabraser partner Mark P. Chalos, who also represents the Plaintiffs in the case. “Government officials turning a blind eye to contaminated water and letting a major American city’s infrastructure crumble into disrepair is neither representing nor caring for its people. This lawsuit seeks to bring justice – and safe, clean water – to the Jackson community.”

As described in the Complaint, the City of Jackson’s water supply has been neglected for decades, culminating in a complete shutdown in August 2022 that left over 153,000 residents, 82% of whom are Black, without access to running water. These residents lacked safe drinking water, or water for making powdered baby formula, cooking, showering, or laundry. During the long period where the city had no water pressure—and was unable to facilitate the flow of water—residents of Jackson could not flush their toilets for days at a time.

“We’re suffering because of the lack of leadership and planning by government officials and others. Access to clean water is a basic human right, and government officials must be held accountable for their misconduct,” said Raine Becker, who is one of the named plaintiffs in the class action. “The purpose of the lawsuit is to force them to fix the water mess, care for our community that has been put in danger, and put the right systems in place so that this never happens again.”

The Complaint goes on to note that even before the water system failed, Jackson’s water supply was not fit for human consumption due to the high levels of lead and other contaminants, in violation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). This environmental justice and public health crisis, decades in the making, was wholly foreseeable by Defendants’ actions and negligence, and left residents in an untenable position – lacking access to clean, safe water in 2022 in a major American city and state capital.

The Complaint further states that Plaintiffs were poisoned by lead and other contaminants released into Jackson’s drinking water as a result of Defendants’ conscience-shocking deliberate indifference. Plaintiffs assert claims for personal injuries based on Defendants’ deprivation of Plaintiffs’ rights to bodily integrity protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Additionally, Plaintiffs assert claims against Trilogy Engineering Services LLC, Siemens Corporation, and Siemens Industry, Inc, for professional and simple negligence in exacerbating the catastrophic, preventable, and ongoing public health crisis.

As one historical data point referenced in the Complaint makes clear, on or about June 23 and 24, 2015, officials from the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) performed water testing in Jackson required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The MSDH found that levels of lead in Jackson’s drinking water exceeded the EPA LCR’s 15 ppb action threshold in 22% of Jackson homes, according to the sampling. By comparison, this was a larger proportion of homes with lead in excess of the LCR’s 15 ppb threshold than found in Flint, Michigan at about that time (16.7%).

In a May 12, 2021 notice, the City of Jackson admitted to its water users that “[d]uring the monitoring periods of 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, we failed to consistently meet treatment technique requirements for our system which is a violation of the Lead and Copper Rule and a requirement of the City’s Optimized Corrosion Control Plan.” From June 21, 2015, to May 28, 2021, Jackson sampled its water for lead 1,352 times. According to records examined by the Clarion Ledger, of those samples 66% contained lead.

“It’s hard to think of a more basic public service than provision of clean, usable water,” notes Lieff Cabraser partner Tiseme Zegeye, who also represents the Plaintiffs in the case. “We are honored to represent the Jackson Plaintiffs who are seeking justice for their families and their communities by holding wrongdoers accountable for this colossal and life-threatening failure of the public works in Jackson.”

The lawsuit seeks immediate injunctive relief, including the removal and remediation of lead pipes and fixtures, an adequate water supply delivered to each home until the water supply is safe for consumption, and an injunction entered to stop all Jackson residents from paying for the contaminated water, as well as compensatory, punitive, exemplary damages.

Learn more about the Jackson Mississippi contaminated water class action lawsuit.

Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, writing for the high court, said the state’s current bail scheme violates the constitution. “Whether an accused person is detained pending trial often does not depend on a careful, individualized determination of the need to protect public safety, but merely — as one judge observes — the accused’s ability to post the sum provided in a county’s uniform bail schedule,” Cuéllar wrote.

“If the defendant poses a flight risk or might commit other crimes, the trial court should consider whether nonfinancial conditions of release may reasonably protect the public and the victim or reasonably assure the arrestee’s presence at trial,” the ruling said.

“Judges may still conclude that money bail is reasonable, but they must consider the defendant’s ability to pay, along with the seriousness of the charged offenses and the person’s criminal record, and set bail in an amount the person can afford,” Cuéllar wrote.

Courts also can keep defendants behind bars if judges find by “clear and convincing” evidence that there is no other way to protect public safety and prevent a flight a risk, the court said.

Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.