South Carolina
Anne McGinness Kearse
Member Attorney
With a background in consumer affairs and products liability, 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.
Currently, she serves as Plaintiffs’ Liaison Counsel on the statewide asbestos exigent docket in West Virginia. Additionally, she represents several of the Canadian Workers’ Compensation Boards seeking to recoup benefits paid out to asbestos victims in Canada.
A Motley Rice member since 2003, Anne began working with Motley Rice attorneys in 1998 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, including:
• “Household Asbestos Exposure Cases: Innocent Victims” (SC Trial Lawyer, Fall 2004)
• “Medicolegal Aspects of Asbestos-Related Disease: A Plaintiff’s Attorney’s Perspective in Roggli, et al. (Motley, Patrick and Kearse, Pathology of Asbestos-Associated Diseases, 2nd Edition, 2004)
• “Decades of Deception: Secrets of Lead, Asbestos and Tobacco” (Trial Magazine, October 1999)
• Comment, “Forfeiting the Home-Court Advantage: The Federal Doctrine of Forum Non Conveniens” (49 S.C. Law Rev. 1303, Summer 1998)
• “The Consolidation Experience - Managing Asbestos Litigation” (Unpublished manuscript, on file with the author)
Anne was highlighted in the 2009 edition of The Legal 500 in recognition of her work in asbestos litigation, and included in the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America for her work in mass tort litigation. In 2008, she was elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Public Justice Foundation and, in 2010, was nominated to serve on the Foundation's Executive Committee. She is a member of the American Association for Justice, American Bar Association and South Carolina Association for Justice. She is also a member of the Order of the Coif, Order of the Wig and Robe, John Belton O’Neal Inn of Court and the James L. Petigru Chapter of the American Inns of Court.