Christopher Edwards

Chris Edwards joined Baron & Budd’s Environmental Litigation Group as an associate in 2016. He specializes in Electronic Discovery, which has been especially meaningful for advising numerous public entity clients in complex mass tort matters relating to environmental contamination and wildfires.

In addition to overseeing every phase of document management, Mr. Edwards works closely with his clients to craft damages models and analyze market share. Mr. Edwards also has years of experience in project management which he utilizes in the supervision of attorneys on his discovery teams. He leverages all his experience to provide sound advice for defensible best practices on corporate governance, policy, compliance, data management, process and technology.

Mr. Edwards is particularly proud of his role in helping to obtain historic $1 billion and $360 million settlements in 2019 from Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, respectively, for damages resulting from the North Bay Wine Country Fires, 2018 Camp Fire, 2018 Woolsey Fire, the 2017 Thomas Fire, and the subsequent Montecito Debris Flow. He worked closely with our public entity clients in Northern and Southern California to determine and quantify the shared challenges facing those communities as they try to rebuild following the state’s devastating conflagrations. In Northern California, these entities included the counties of Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Yuba, Nevada, Butte and Calaveras, the cities of Chico, Napa, Clearlake, Paradise, Santa Rosa, and several related agencies including fire and water districts. In Southern California, these entities included the counties of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura, the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Malibu, Thousand Oaks, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Westlake Village, as well as a number of flood control and fire protection districts in the vicinity.

Mr. Edwards is honored to have worked with many public entity clients on their lawsuits against the Monsanto Corporation for contaminating stormwater and waterbodies across America with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCB contamination presents a devastating problem as it escapes into the environment during rain events, reaches stormwater systems owned by public entities, and is then discharged into larger waterbodies where it damages precious ecosystems.

Chris Edwards worked on a case in San Luis Obispo and El Cajon, California, to represent families who sued Ametek, Inc., an aerospace manufacturing company which operated in the area for several decades, for contaminating the area’s air and drinking water with trichloroethylene, or TCE, a toxic, cancer-causing chemical. He also worked with drinking water suppliers in several states for successful resolution of price-fixing litigation against companies that make liquid aluminum sulfate (“alum”), a chemical that removes impurities and other substances from water before it is delivered for public consumption.

Chris Edwards is currently working with our clients in nationwide litigation pertaining to aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). In addition, he is involved in the firm’s lawsuits against Chemours and DuPont for contaminating communities and waters with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) including GenX, a group of potent fluorochemicals. He has also taken an active role in litigation in New Jersey involving Sherwin-Williams Superfund Sites and cases in California where water supply wells were contaminated by the toxic chemical trichloropropane (TCP).

Mr. Edwards also works with numerous school districts in their lawsuits against leading e-cigarette manufacturer JUUL Labs, Inc., for obstructing learning environments in schools across California by creating a youth e-cigarette epidemic. His clients in that action currently include Los Angeles Unified School District, San Diego Unified School District, Glendale Unified School District, Anaheim Elementary School District and the Compton Unified School District, among others.

Chris Edwards enjoys giving back to the communities in which he lives and works by advocating for clients through the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program. He has represented clients pro bono in family law and probate matters and derives much satisfaction from helping people in need and positively impacting the lives of others.