Robert Bilott was a corporate defense attorney at one of Ohio’s top firms when he got a call from a West Virginia farmer, who told Bilott that his cows were dying, and he believed a DuPont dump next to his farm was the reason.
That was in 1998. In 2001, Bilott filed a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of 70,000 people. In 2004, DuPont settled for more than $300 million. Trials in related cases continue today.
Bilott, an attorney and 1983 graduate of New College of Florida, was profiled in The New York Times Magazine in January 2016, in an article headlined ‘The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.’