Gary DiMuzio, Class Action Attorney in New York

Attorney Gary DiMuzio is a partner in the Asbestos Department at Simmons Hanly Conroy. He joined the firm in 2019, bringing 25 years of experience helping victims of mesothelioma and other environmental and workplace hazards. During his career, Gary has represented plaintiffs in cases involving mesothelioma, lung cancer, leukemia, liver cancer, silicosis, plant explosions and environmental contamination.

Based in the firm’s New York office, Gary has been litigating mesothelioma cases since 1998. As a trial attorney, he handles every aspect of the litigation process, from client intake to discovery, to motion practice through trial verdict, working to achieve justice for his clients, anywhere in the country.

“I will first work with the litigation team to learn a client’s story, then contact them to get additional insight and prepare them for trial,” Gary said. “All of us will work together to give the client their best possible day in court and the best result for them and their family.”

Success at Trial

Gary is a skilled legal advocate for his clients and has secured impressive and continuing results. During his legal tenure, Gary has served as first and second chair during trials that resulted in multi-million-dollar results, representing individuals suffering from mesothelioma due to exposure from machinery, automobiles, insulators, sheetrock, refineries, industrial workplaces and respirators. He has also handled cases involving secondary/household exposure. Gary has fought for the spouses and children of workers who were exposed to the deadly dust brought home by workers and diagnosed decades later.

In November 2020, as lead attorney, Gary secured a $10.3 million verdict against two stevedoring companies and a shipping company on behalf of Henry Pete, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2019. Henry was exposed to raw asbestos he unloaded from the Port of New Orleans while working as a longshoreman in the 1960s. Along with Gary, firm partners Michael K. Hibey, Melissa Crowe Schopfer and Jean-Michel LeCointre represented the family in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans.

In 2016, Gary secured a nearly $5 million verdict for Vera Letha Adams, the widow of Perry Adams, against John Crane Inc. Perry passed away from mesothelioma in 2012 after previously testifying against John Crane Inc. and other defendants. The jury found John Crane liable for Perry’s exposure to products containing asbestos during a nearly 20-year career, working at the Mahrt paper mill in Alabama.

“Many mesothelioma victims have never filed a lawsuit and thought they would never do so,” Gary said. “In the process of dealing with a diagnosis of mesothelioma and its impact on every aspect of their lives, these men and women learn for the first time that not only could their past work have been the source of asbestos exposure, the dangers of such exposure were widely known among experts and the industry since at least 1930. But rather than risk profits, workers were put at risk.”

In addition to handling asbestos cases, Gary has experience litigating cases involving hydrofluoric acid, PAHs, crude oil wastes, TCE, vinyl chloride, styrene tars, creosote and silica. His standout results include:

• Prosecuting large environmental Superfund, chemical and explosion cases, as well as silicosis, benzene, hard metal disease and other toxic exposure injuries.
• Drafting successful amicus briefs to various state supreme courts on causation methodology.
• Designing and coordinating the execution of a large environmental epidemiology study.
• Spearheading the statewide Utah MDL causation hearing, leading to a denial of the defendants’ motion to adopt the Borg-Warner v. Flores Texas decision requiring quantification of exposure.
• Successfully defending asbestos experts in the first State of Georgia Daubert challenge hearing.

In addition to these victories in courtrooms coast to coast, Gary has litigated hundreds of other cases against some of the nation’s largest corporations and the scientists they hire to defend them. On a daily basis, he secures significant settlements for the firm’s clients and their families in these additional cases before a trial or a verdict is warranted.

Background and Experience

Gary entered law school with the goal of helping those poisoned by pollution, concentrating his studies on environmental and occupational contamination law. As a law student and legal intern for the Environmental Defense Fund, he drafted the fund’s first successful lawsuit in Texas.

“My early experience seeing law, science and policy interface created the impetus to understand sciences such as toxicology, epidemiology, biostatics, environmental studies, risk assessment and exposure assessment in order to be the best advocate for my clients,” he said.

With this underlying objective, Gary undertook environmental public health studies at the University of Texas School of Public Health concurrently with his law degree. He also worked on environmental issues with the Harris County Attorney’s Office Environmental Division/Harris County Pollution Controls lawyers and experts, as well as researching how the courts judged causation science and toxic tort experts for the University of Houston Environmental Liability Law Program.

Before joining the firm, Gary served as of counsel at a Virginia firm while also managing his own Texas-based firm.

Gary received a B.M. in Classical Guitar Performance from Texas A&M University in 1986. He received his J.D. from University of Houston Law Center in 1992.