Nathan D. Finch

In the early 1990’s Nate represented coal miners who were injured or killed after their employers failed to follow their own safety rules. Beginning in the late 1990s Nate began representing victims of asbestos exposure, both in individual cases before juries and in multi-plaintiff cases in bench trials before federal district court judges when asbestos companies and/or their shareholder owners tried to use the bankruptcy process to defeat the claims of approximately 100,000 injured workers. He has extensive experience trying cases involving a wide variety of asbestos-containing products, including gaskets, automotive brakes, floor tiles, joint compounds, baby powder, and various forms of insulation.

One of Nate’s more recent asbestos individual plaintiff jury trials received national attention when he reached a settlement mid-trial against Baby Powder manufacturer Johnson & Johnson.
 
In the bench trials involving asbestos defendants, Nate tried four cases to judgment where he won verdicts in favor of his clients that exceeded $1 billion each: 
MOTLEY RICE CASE:
In re Bondex ($1.1 billion*) (W.D. Pa. 2013).

PRIOR TO MOTLEY RICE: 
In re Owens Corning ($7 billion*) (D.Del. 2005) 
In re Armstrong World Industries ($3 billion*) (D. Del. 2006) 
In re Turner & Newall ($9 billion*) (D.Del. 2005) 

When he isn’t trying cases against asbestos companies, Nate represents individual smokers in cases against Big Tobacco, which intentionally designed their cigarettes to be highly addictive without telling smokers they were doing so. Nate has obtained plaintiffs’ verdicts in several cases for smokers who started smoking in the 1960s (or earlier) before warnings were on the packages. Martindale-Hubbell^® has recognized Nate as an AV^® rated attorney for more than 20 years.

Nate was a member of the Virginia Law Review and the Order of the Coif and is a former scholarship athlete on the varsity track and cross country teams at UVA.

* Please remember that every case is different. Any result we achieve for one client in one matter does not necessarily indicate similar results can be obtained for other clients.