Elizabeth Warren worked on over 50 legal issues while teaching law

Senator Elizabeth Warren has worked on over 50 legal issues during her career as a professor at the Ivy League Law Schools, asking for up to $ 675 at the time to advise various clients, individuals from the disease to asbestos, through a company liable for breast implants.

Warren's presidential campaign published a list of 56 cases on his website on Wednesday night, revealing a much larger caseload than Warren (D-Mass.) Had previously disclosed and detailing some aspect of his career. she rarely discusses in public.

During her first Senate candidacy in 2012, Warren was put under pressure by her Republican opponent and the media for her to discuss her legal work. At that time, she published a list of just 13 cases without saying whether it represented complete accounting; at least one other case appeared during the race.

"Elizabeth was one of the country's best experts on how to ensure that the victims of bankrupt companies are finally paid," Warren's website said late Wednesday. "Throughout her career, she has worked on creating trusts and other mechanisms to return $ 27 billion to victims and their families."

In a separate article, the Washington Post revealed that a wave of Warren's legal work occurred in the early 2000s as manufacturing companies whose products containing asbestos were bankrupted as a result waves of claims for bodily injury.

A recognized expert in the field of bankruptcy law, Warren consulted more than a dozen committees representing plaintiffs and creditors in these cases, often in partnership with law firm Caplin & Drysdale, for a hourly rate of $ 675.

Warren has also worked for several client companies. she revealed some of them in 2012. In 1987, she advised the former directors of Getty Oil during the Texaco bankruptcy. In 2003, she was an expert witness of the Fuller-Austin Insulation Co. in a case against insurers. In 2005, she presented a testimony reinforcing the case of the private equity firm Platinum Equity in a contractual dispute.

Dow Chemical, which she advised in the mid-1990s, was one of her most controversial clients. A subsidiary that manufactures silicone gel breast implants has faced hundreds of thousands of claims from women that their implants pose health problems. Dow Chemical denied having played a role in the design or manufacture of implants and sought to avoid liability when its subsidiary, Dow Corning, declared bankruptcy.

"In this case, Elizabeth served as a consultant to ensure adequate compensation for women who were claiming silicone breast implants and who would otherwise have received nothing at the time of Dow Corning's bankruptcy," reads in the list of cases. from Warren. "Thanks in part to Elizabeth's efforts, Dow Corning has created a $ 2.35 billion fund to compensate women who report being injured by Dow Corning's silicone breast implants."

The post office could not immediately verify this figure.

In the list published by the Warren campaign, most articles include a summary in which Warren was created to save jobs by representing the interests of a company or by defending the interests of injured victims.

For example, Warren's work on behalf of Fairchild Aircraft, a case after an aircraft accident in which the builder was not found liable, was described as protecting "hundreds of years". ; jobs. " When she defended the interests of asbestos claimants, her work was described as defending the interests of the victims.

The details about Warren's compensation were rare in the court records. Documents examined by The Post showed that Warren had earned at least $ 462,321.75 from his work in 13 cases, although the total of these cases could be much higher. Warren has only published his last 10 years of tax returns and much of his legal advisory work is not reflected in these documents.

The Post found that Warren had started working as a lawyer since 1991, when she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The work seems to have resumed in 1995, when she joined the faculty of Harvard Law School, and she stepped up in the early 2000s while she was working on a series of bankruptcies. mass.

Warren's roles in these cases have varied. She has sometimes served as an expert witness or filed briefs; at other times, she advised her colleagues or directly represented her clients. She has worked in more than 20 different courts, including the Supreme Court, where she has worked on at least eight cases.

The asbestos cases included work on behalf of Travelers Insurance. In this case, reported for the first time by the Boston Globe in May 2012, Warren had helped the company get out of the asbestos-related lawsuit by establishing a trust $ 500 million for current and future victims. But after Warren was no longer involved in the dispute, Travelers was able to preserve his immunity while avoiding paying the $ 500 million, a result that Warren told the Globe that she had not planned.

Another case, that of LTV Steel, put Warren in disagreement with Richard Trumka, then president of United Mine Workers and now president of AFL-CIO.

In this case, Warren pleaded in a document in the Supreme Court to help LTV fight a new law that required him to set aside millions of dollars to fund the health care of coal miners in retirement , according to the Globe. Warren claimed that she supported an important legal principle that would help workers get the help they needed earlier.

In his testimony before Congress, Trumka said there should be no exception to the rule. "When that goes away, you will have about 200,000 miners and beneficiaries who will lose their health care," he told Congress. Trumka did not seem to have a grudge and then campaigned for Warren's candidacy in the Senate in 2012.