PERSONAL INJURY & WRONGFUL DEATH
SMOKING & CANCER
ASBESTOS & CANCER
BENZENE & CANCER
BAUXITE & CANCER
LIFE, HEALTH & HAPPINESS ARE PRECIOUS!
When you or a loved one is injured, your first step should be seeking medical care. The next step is to contact Attorney Russell Pate, as the journey to justice and legal recovery can be challenging and complex.
At the Pate Law Firm, I represent individuals, families and small businesses injured by corporate negligence, greed, or sheer callousness. I care about you and your family. Get the facts. Ask questions. And let’s talk!
PERSONAL INJURY
Personal injury is much more than just injury to your body. You are more than just flesh-and-blood. You have a mind, body and soul, which includes all your hopes, dreams, happiness, and peace of mind. All elements of being Human and created in God’s image. When this is wrongfully robbed due to the unnecessary carelessness of others, the Court and Jury’s job is to provide full and fair compensation in money as a trade for all wrongs and harms caused.
WRONGFUL DEATH
Losing a loved one is traumatic enough, but when the death is the fault of a person or corporation, holding the wrongdoer accountable makes all of society safer. Under Virgin Islands' Wrongful Death laws, the widowed spouse and all children (even adult children) can seek the loss of relationship and companionship of their father, mother, child and/or spouse who was needlessly killed by the negligence or carelessness of a person or corporation.
SMOKING & CANCER
For over 50 years tobacco companies have hidden and downplayed the danger of cigarettes smoke, nicotine addiction, cancer, heart disease, and the effect of smoke on children by creating a controversy of misinformation about the hazards of smoking. If you or a family member starting smoking as a child – even if you have now quit – please contact the Pate Law Firm for a free consultation. People can develop smoking relating lung cancers and diseases many years after stopping smoking.
ASBESTOS & CANCER
Asbestos causes many types of cancer, including throat cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, colon/rectal cancer and mesothelioma cancer. Many people who were pipe fitters, boilermakers, mechanics, electricians, shipbuilders, sandblasters, maintenance workers, laborers or in heavy industry were exposed to insulation, valves and gaskets containing asbestos. If you worked in a refinery or around asbestos products, contact the Pate Law Firm for a free consultation.
BENZENE & CANCER
If you worked in an Oil Refinery you likely had exposure to volatile hydrocarbons like Benzene, Xylene and Toluene. This aromatic toxic chemicals are inhaled, along with seeping through your skin, to cause many cancers like Leukemia, Myeloma and Lymphoma. If you have a Cancer diagnosis and you worked in an Oil Refinery, contact us right now.
BAUXITE & CANCER
If you worked in an Alumina Bauxite Refinery, you likely had exposure to red bauxite dust. This red dust causes lung scarring and lung cancers and tumors. Lung scarring makes breathing more difficult, which then increases blood pressure and the risk of heart attack and stroke. Please contact us for a free medical test.
Attorney Pate has the largest personal injury verdicts in the U.S.V.I. at $82 million and $31 million. He has been involved in the largest and most complicated cases in the Virgin Islands, and in total, his office has over $300 million in settlements and verdicts.
https://stthomassource.com/content/2018/08/29/two-v-i-families-win-113-million-in-tobacco-trial/
J. Russell B. Pate, Esq., LLM
ATTORNEY AT LAW
Attorney Russell Pate earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law. He then earned a masters-of-law from California Western School of Law in San Diego in the area of trial advocacy. Attorney Pate started his legal career working for a large plaintiff’s law firm helping people around the world who had developed cancer from exposure to asbestos and other toxic substances. Next, he worked with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Texas practicing criminal defense in the federal courts of the United States. Before opening his own law firm, he worked for an insurance defense firm on St. Thomas.
Attorney Pate has twice served as President of the Virgin Islands Bar Association, he has been voted Best Lawyer in the Virgin Islands for multiple years, and he served on the V.I. Supreme Court’s Rules Committee. Further, Attorney Pate’s work focuses on some of the biggest and most complicated lawsuits in the Virgin Islands, which have resulted in over $300 million in settlements and verdicts. He has the largest personal injury trial verdicts in the Virgin Islands at $82 million and $31 million for wrongful death.
Attorney Pate is a strong advocate for the United States to stop treating Americans in the U.S. Territories as second-class citizens. Men and women in the Virgin Islands have fought for the United States in all branches of the military. All gave some and some gave all, laying down their lives for the American freedoms of democracy and liberty. There is no excuse why Americans in the Virgin Islands should not be included in every level of government which governs them. This is a basic and fundamental principal of American democracy. Those in the USVI should be able to vote for the President, two U.S. Senators and a Congressional Representative, as well as run for those positions themselves.
Outside of his advocacy, Attorney Pate enjoys gardening and growing Caribbean and African herbs, plants and trees to make local bush teas. You may also see him paddle-boarding from Rainbow Beach to Sandy Point or across the Big Island spray-painting yellow warnings around potholes.
THANK YOU JURORS
A lawsuit is more than just compensation for victims of wrongdoing. Unfortunately, some companies see harm to people as just collateral damage and the cost of doing business. But by holding wrongdoers accountable with money damages, a lawsuit can take the profit out of harming others. As a result, what happened to one person, will not happen again to someone else and the whole community is safer.
"Justice - the hope of all who suffer, the dread of all who do wrong." - John Greenleaf Whittier, 1833
Quaker, poet and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Lawsuits are not a "lottery ticket" for an injured person. 99.9% of people injured would much rather never be hurt, than to go through the stress, delay and uncertainty of a lawsuit, never knowing if they will ever receive a penny. But the Court System is specifically designed to make Society Safer, by making Wrongdoers that cause harm responsible for paying full value in money for all harm caused. When careless people or greedy corporations have to pay fully for all harm and damage caused, there us a deterrence, and all of society is safer, from grandchild to granparent.
JURIES WORK. JUDGES WHO SEE HUNDREDS OF TRIALS SAY JURIES GET THINGS RIGHT THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME.
The earliest juries developed as a balance to the King’s power. It turned out that if the King had all the money and all the power, judges usually decided the King was right. Today’s kings are big corporations, and juries still serve to equal the playing field for the ordinary citizen.
If you have served on a jury, I want to thank you. Your service preserves and upholds the protections of justice, equality, and the rule of law. Those who endured many troubled years to get to a jury trial, made that stressful and demanding journey to tell you their story and to hear your important verdict. In my opinion, a fight to gain justice though the Court is heroic. Your service makes justice possible.
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet devised by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." - Thomas Jefferson 1789
Third President of The United States
JUSTICE AND THE JURY
Today, why are so few civil cases proceeding to trial? Getting to a jury is a lot more difficult and expensive than it used to be. Less than 1% of civil cases make it to a jury. An army of lawyers and expert witnesses may drive up litigation cost so most ordinary folks cannot afford to get their case to a jury.
Insurance companies and big corporations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to distribute misinformation about our justice system, saying our system is broken. However, in front of jury is a rare place where an average citizen really can stand equal to the powerful and moneyed. Ordinary people just like you are losing access to the courts, juries, and justice. An eye opening and incredible documentary, “Hot Coffee,” tells the stories of four families whose lives were devastated by big business rules that rob the jury of delivering justice. Further, the American Association of Justice tells about how individual lawsuits and jury verdicts have made the world a safer place for our children.
THANK YOU CLIENTS
