Missouri Lawyers Media Names Tom Weaver a 2020 Lawyer of the Year

Missouri Lawyers Media has named Armstrong Teasdale appellate attorney Thomas B. Weaver as one of its two 2020 Lawyers of the Year. Weaver earned the honor for his precedent-setting defense appellate work in talcum-powder litigation.

As noted by Missouri Lawyers Media, out-of-state plaintiff groups have frequently picked Missouri as the venue to try their cases. In February, however, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that a plaintiff couldn’t use joinder to establish venue in a place where it otherwise wouldn’t exist as to the joined claims. Weaver led the appellate team that drafted the brief for two of the defendants’ challenging the venue-by-joinder practice and argued the case before the Missouri Supreme Court. Missouri legislators passed a new law embracing the Supreme Court’s ruling. Under a related precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the use of joinder in an attempt to establish personal jurisdiction, appellate courts have reversed and vacated all of the earlier judgments in favor of plaintiffs in talcum powder cases tried in St. Louis. Again, Weaver led the appellate team preparing the brief in the appeals from those judgments and presented the oral argument in those appeals.

Leader of the firm’s Appellate practice area, in over 150 appeals Weaver has implemented sophisticated post-trial strategies to develop persuasive arguments based on legal and policy considerations and authorities.. He is a fellow in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and has appeared before the Supreme Court of Missouri, Missouri Court of Appeals, Illinois Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Eighth, Seventh, Fourth, and Tenth Circuits.

Weaver will be honored with other award recipients at the Missouri Lawyers Awards luncheon on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020.