Missouri Lawyers Awards 2024: Seth Webb

Partner, Brown and Crouppen, St. Louis

Seth Webb estimates that his mass tort practice has helped perhaps 10,000 victims of cost-cutting companies who sometimes act irresponsibly with disregard for the public’s safety and wellbeing.

“Most of those people would never have known that they had a case or even what the cause of their injury was for that matter if they hadn’t seen our advertisement,” said the 47-year-old Mizzou alumnus.

A native of Jackson, Mo., Webb found that 2023 saw Roundup cases finally starting to come to fruition. Other matters of note during the year have included everything from hernia mesh matters to mesothelioma issues to cases related to Camp LeJune claimants launching suit over toxins allegedly dumped in groundwater by the government.

“When I started doing mass torts 20 years ago, not a lot of people did it,” Webb said. “At that time, it was very niche and only a handful of firms in the St. Louis area did it at all. Over the past 20 years, a lot more people have gotten into it across the country.”

Indeed, Webb is now marking two decades at his firm where he began by handling car accidents before quickly moving into the mass tort division with work on Vioxx suits. He was the driving force in bringing that department from four employees to a nationwide practice with 20 team members and 30 mass torts.

Webb, who made partner in 2021, has overseen more than $350 million in mass tort settlements.

He said he likes multi-district litigation that can take him all over the nation.

“I get to help a huge number of people,” he noted. “These cases generally have hundreds of claimants if not more just at my firm. There are thousands, tens of thousands, sometimes a hundred thousand across the country at all the firms. It is nice to help as many people as you possibly can.”

The important thing is that he never gets bored with his area of law.

“It is always something new,” he noted. “Each litigation has its own twists and turns.”