R. Brent Wisner
Attorney R. Brent Wisner is a senior shareholder and the vice president of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, a nationwide law firm based in Los Angeles, California. He focuses his practice on holding negligent and sometimes malicious corporations accountable through pharmaceutical product liability, toxic torts and consumer fraud and class action litigation. One of the firm’s leading trial lawyers, Brent oversees the mass tort litigation department. He is actively involved in all litigation stages, from briefing to trial and through the appeal process when necessary.
He is passionate about vindicating the rights of those harmed by corporate wrongdoing. No matter how large the corporation or how much global influence it has, Attorney Wisner never backs down in the face of injustice. He has litigated cases against such companies as Bayer, Eli Lilly, Forest Labs, GlaxoSmithKline, Monsanto and Takeda.
A Key Force in the Monsanto Roundup Cancer Trials
Attorney Wisner’s work on the Monsanto Roundup litigation earned him national acclaim as the youngest United States attorney in history to ever win a multi-billion-dollar jury verdict. In 2019, Brent and his team won a historic $2.055 billion verdict against Bayer (formerly Monsanto) for a California couple that alleged repeated exposure to Roundup weed killer caused them to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
A year prior, Brent and his team won the first Roundup case to proceed to trial, a landmark $289 million jury verdict for a California man who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of spraying Roundup as a groundskeeper.
Many major legal organizations have recognized Brent and showered him with numerous awards honoring his achievements in the Roundup cancer litigation. Some of his top awards include, Law360 MVP of the Year 2020, Daily Journal Top 100 Lawyers in California 2020, ALM and the National Trial Lawyers’ 2019 Civil Plaintiff Trial Lawyer of the Year, the National Law Journal’s Winning Litigators Titans of Industry 2019 and Trial Lawyer Magazine America’s 50 Most Influential Trial Lawyers 2019.
A Leading Plaintiff’s Attorney in Pharmaceutical Litigation
Attorney Wisner also served as co-lead counsel in the first multi-million-dollar jury verdict won against a brand name drug manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), over the health risks posed by the generic version of GSK’s antidepressant drug, Paxil (paroxetine).
When the firm learned of a widow whose husband died by suicide while taking the generic version of Paxil, Attorney Wisner and his colleagues at the firm took on GSK for inadequately warning doctors about how the drug could increase the risk of suicidal behavior in adults of all ages. In 2018 the National Law Journal honored Attorney Wisner and his firm as Elite Trial Lawyers for their work in the generic Paxil suicide case and Law360 awarded him Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar.
His work in pharmaceutical litigation does not stop at harmful antidepressant medications. Attorney Wisner is one of the nation’s leading Zantac (ranitidine) attorneys. He represents many thousands of people throughout the country who allege Zantac (ranitidine) contains a cancer-causing ingredient at levels exponentially higher than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) legal limit.
The judge presiding over the Zantac multidistrict litigation (MDL) appointed Brent to the Practices and Procedures Team to establish protocols for handling the thousands of cases to come. Attorney Wisner also serves as the American Association for Justice (AAJ) Zantac Litigation Group Co-Chair.
Awards & Accolades
Often chosen as one of a select group of remarkable trial lawyers with victories in high-stakes matters, Attorney Wisner is grateful for the many awards and accolades he has won in the early stage of his career. Not yet in his 40’s, Brent is viewed by many in the legal community as one of the country’s leading mass tort lawyers. The National Law Journal and VerdictSearch inducted him into the Verdicts Hall of Fame in 2020.
Just a portion of his recognitions from the past few years include the following:
- America’s 50 Most Influential Trial Lawyers 2019, Trial Lawyer Magazine and The National Law Journal
- MVP of the Year 2020, Product Liability, Law360
- Product Liability Practice Group of the Year 2020, Law360
- The Best Lawyers in America© 2021
- The National Trial Lawyers: Top 40 under 40
- Top 40 Under 40 Attorneys in California, 2019, Daily Journal
- Civil Plaintiffs Trial Lawyer of the Year 2019, National Trial Lawyers and ALM
- Top 100 Lawyers in California 2020, Daily Journal
- Top Plaintiffs Lawyers in California, 2019, Daily Journal
- Verdicts Hall of Fame Inductee, The National Law Journal and VerdictSearch
- Elite Trial Lawyers Mass Tort Trial Team of the Year 2019, The National Law Journal and Trial Lawyer Magazine
- Southern California Super Lawyers® Rising Stars, 2016–2020
- Winning Litigators 2019, The National Law Journal
- Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar 2018, Law360
- Avvo.com Superb Score 10 out of 10
- Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyer
Early Years
Attorney Wisner earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, his master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy, Washington, D.C., and his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
A proud UCLA Bruin, Brent served as captain of UCLA’s Mock Trial Team, which won back-to-back national championships under his leadership.
At Georgetown, Attorney Wisner was a participant in the Coro Fellowship, which proved to be a formative experience. As a fellow, he was able to work on numerous projects aimed at improving communities with the help of labor unions, Fortune 100 companies, non-profits, and local and federal governments. When he returned home for summer breaks, he worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in its civil fraud division and as a summer associate at Paul Hastings.
While in law school, Brent interned at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, where he drafted testimony, affidavits, and declarations for human rights cases. He penned a resolution on the imprisonment of outspoken human trafficking critic Sigma Huda, which passed in the House of Representatives. Brent was also intensely involved in the Georgetown Law Trial Advocacy Program. He earned the title of being one of the institution’s most successful mock trial advocates and ended up serving as its managing director.
Before joining Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, Attorney Wisner clerked for the Honorable Helen Gillmor in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, where he worked on several criminal and civil jury trials and gained invaluable appellate court experience when the judge sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
- Top Plaintiffs Lawyers in California, 2020, Daily Journal
- Listed, The Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers™
- Nation’s Top One Percent, National Association of Distinguished Counsel
- Avvo.com Superb Score 10 out of 10
- Selected: Southern California Super Lawyers® – Rising Stars, 2016 – 2020
- The National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40
- Top List: Up-And-Coming-100, 2018 and 2019 Southern California Rising Stars
- Top 100 Product Liability Verdicts in the U.S. in 2017, Topverdict.com (Dolin v. GSK)
- Top 10 Product Liability Verdicts in Illinois in 2017, Topverdict.com (Dolin v. GSK)
- Law360 Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar (lifetime award)
- Top 100 Lawyers in California 2018, Daily Journal
- 2018 Elite Trial Lawyers, Winner Pharmaceutical Litigation, The National Law Journal
- CVN’s Top 10 Most Impressive Plaintiff Verdicts of 2018
- Top 100 Verdicts 2018, ALM, National Law Journal, Verdict Search (Johnson v. Monsanto Co.)
- Top 10 Personal Injury Verdicts in the U.S. in 2018, Topverdict.com (Johnson v. Monsanto Co.)
- Number 1 Product Liability Verdict in California in 2018, Topverdict.com (Johnson v. Monsanto Co.)
- Daily Journal Top Verdicts, 2018
- Trial Team of the Year 2019, The National Trial Lawyers Top 100
- The Round Table: America’s Most Influential Trial Lawyers, Trial Lawyer Magazine and The National Law Journal
- Top Plaintiffs Lawyers in California, 2019, Daily Journal
- 2019 Elite Trial Lawyers Mass Torts Trial Team of the Year, The National Law Journal and The Trial Lawyer Magazine
- Top 10 Verdicts in California in 2019, Topverdict.com (Pilliod et al. v. Monsanto Co.)
- Number 1 Verdict in California in 2019, Topverdict.com (Pilliod et al. v. Monsanto Co.)
- Top 40 Under 40 Attorneys in California, 2019, Daily Journal (lifetime award)
- Winning Litigators 2019, The National Law Journal
- Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyer
- 2019 Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalist, Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles
- 2020 Elite Trial Lawyers Mass Torts Law Firm of the Year, Finalist, ALM and National Law Journal
- America’s 50 Most Influential Trial Lawyers, 2019, Trial Lawyer Magazine and The National Law Journal
- 2019 Civil Plaintiffs Trial Lawyer of the Year, National Trial Lawyers and ALM
- Top Plaintiffs Lawyers in California, 2020, Daily Journal
Larkspur, California 94939
