South Carolina

Anne McGinness Kearse
Member

Anne McGinness Kearse focuses her practice on occupational health, worker safety and workplace injuries. Through her litigation and trial work, Anne has fought the asbestos and tobacco industries and other corporations that put profits before safety. In addition to obtaining compensation for victims who have been injured by these companies, Anne has been instrumental in the implementation of better safety practices and corporate governance measures and in holding companies accountable for the health and safety of workers and the public. She serves in a managing role for the firm’s occupational health and catastrophic injury practice groups.  

Anne represents many victims of asbestos exposure who have contracted the devastating, deadly occupational disease mesothelioma through asbestos exposure in the chemical, electric power generation, steel and construction industries. Most of her clients have had direct contact with asbestos yet were never told by their employers or product manufacturers of the severe health hazards of asbestos exposure. Anne also litigates asbestos claims on behalf of household exposure victims, including children and housewives who have developed mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos brought home on the clothes of their family members.

In addition to managing an active trial docket, Anne represents Canadian Workers’ Compensation Boards seeking to recoup benefits paid out to asbestos victims in Canada.

Anne worked on behalf of the State Attorneys General in the historic lawsuit against Big Tobacco, resulting in the largest civil settlement in U.S. history. She has tried several noteworthy cases, including Cox vs. A&I Company, West Virginia’s first domestic asbestos exposure case, and the 2002 West Virginia Consolidated Asbestos Trial against Union Carbide in which the company was found to have maintained unsafe working conditions at their plants throughout the state. Her litigation experience includes several catastrophic injury or wrongful death cases as a result of workplace incidents. 

Anne frequently speaks on asbestos litigation, tort reform and general product liability at seminars across the country. She has been published on major legal issues, including forum non conveniens and defective products abroad, corporate conduct, medicolegal aspects of asbestos litigation and mass tort litigation. She has written several articles of interest to the plaintiffs’ bar.

Anne was selected by her peers for inclusion in the 2011 and 2012 editions of The Best Lawyers in America® for her work in mass tort litigation, and the inaugural edition of Benchmark Plaintiff, The Definitive Guide to America’s Leading Plaintiff Firms & Attorneys recognized her as a "Local Litigation Star" in both its national and South Carolina rankings for mass torts/products liability. The National Trial Lawyers named her in 2010 as a Top 100 Trial Lawyer™. She was also highlighted in the 2009 and 2011 Litigation editions of The Legal 500 (mass tort and class action: plaintiff representation- toxic tort). 

In 2010, Anne was nominated to serve on the Executive Committee for the Public Justice Foundation and, in 2011, was re-elected to serve on the Foundation's Board of Directors. She was named in 2011 to the Executive Board for Safe Kids Trident Coalition, a local chapter of Safe Kids USA, to serve as an advocate for childhood injury prevention.