Ben Bailey

Background

About Ben Bailey

My favorite legal habitat is the courtroom. I began my trial career as a federal prosecutor, focusing on a series of fraudulent coal tax shelter cases which recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for the US Treasury. I spent the next four years as counsel to the Governor of West Virginia, and 10 years in a prominent West Virginia-based defense firm. With Brian Glasser, I founded Bailey Glasser in We almost immediately took on the representation of the State of West Virginia, in groundbreaking environmental and constitutional litigation over mountaintop removal mining, which I ultimately argued and won on appeal in the Fourth Circuit. As the firm grew, our practice expanded to include cases as diverse as representing hundreds of rural residents of West Virginia who lost their water wells to coal mining, and defending white-collar criminal cases and accused murderers. We also handled scores of complicated commercial litigations for plaintiffs and defendants, and advised and represented numerous lawyers and public officials in sensitive and confidential cases. More recently, I worked for a family in Flint, Michigan, whose mother died after her Toyota accelerated out of control, culminated in my selection to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the Toyota Sudden Acceleration MDLs in Orange County, California. That successful work was followed, in short order, by my selection to the leadership of the Volkswagen Dieselgate MDL, in San Francisco, California, the largest automobile products class action in history, which settled for more than $10 billion. Simultaneously, I served as one of the coordinating lawyers in the Freedom Industries Chemical Spill case, which has a settlement process underway to provide up to $150 million to residents and businesses in West Virginia whose water was contaminated by the spill. Our firm is now 74 lawyers strong, and we have 16 different offices across the country.