Featured Post: Toyota Unintended Acceleration - learn more about the Toyota unintended acceleration recall.
Mesothelioma Lawyers Video | Simmons Law Firm
View, rate and comment on our video about Simmons firm mesothelioma lawyers.
Truth Versus Distortion
Here’s a story about people pooling their efforts to help working men and women. Unfortunately, the story is also about how, for political reasons, their efforts have been distorted and misrepresented.
Workers formerly employed at a Dow Chemical plant in Madison, Illinois and a General Steel Industries plant in Granite City, Illinois were exposed to radioactive materials used in fabricating nuclear weapons beginning in the 1950s. Many of them have developed cancer as a result, and they are eligible to receive compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, or EEOICPA. Nearly 600 cases have been filed with the Department of Labor.
However, their claims have been mired in federal bureaucracy. To date, not a single worker has received compensation for injuries resulting from exposures at either of these plants. Some of the claimants have been waiting for five years.
All sorts of folks have gotten together to push the process forward and help these deserving victims. Senator Barack Obama is on the team. Congressman John Shimkus is equally committed to help. Dr. Daniel McKeel Jr., a retired Associate Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine who played a critical role helping similarly situated Mallinckrodt workers a few years ago, is providing invaluable expert assistance.
SimmonsCooper is also helping. No one at SimmonsCooper – repeat, no one – is being paid to help. SimmonsCooper does not have a single client relationship among the workers affected nor are we trying to get any. SimmonsCooper is not soliciting lawsuits. We are performing a service to the community, just as we have in the past and just as we will continue to in the future.
The real story is about how people from different backgrounds and with different philosophies can find common cause when it comes to helping workers. Senator Obama is a Democrat. Congressman Shimkus is a Republican. Their differences don’t matter here.
If you want further details about the problem and our efforts to solve it, read Michael Shaw’s article in the May 4 St. Louis Post –Dispatch. It fairly captures the spirit driving the collective work that’s being done to help these victims.
Alas, the same cannot be said for all newspapers. One small newspaper, with a history of attacking lawyers who represent injured clients, characterized the effort on behalf of the victims as an attempt by SimmonsCooper to solicit lawsuits, adding a scurrilous implication that Dan McKeel is helping us in that effort.
The article was so bad, so inaccurate from start to finish, that it was withdrawn from the newspaper’s website. A retraction is still owed everyone, including the workers, along with an acknowledgement that no one wants any money except the money due to the workers.
So that’s the other story here – a sad story, indeed, about how the victims of industrial tragedy become pawns in an ideological struggle.
What Are Your Priorities?
SimmonsCooper recently donated $10.2 million to build The Simmons Cooper Cancer Institute at SIU, which will catapult Southern Illinois University into the forefront of cancer research and treatment.
A local reporter saw this event as a pretext to criticize law firms like ours that win major cases against corporations, and to snicker at the size of the judgments we have achieved.
You’d think millions of dollars to alleviate suffering would be accepted at face value. You’d think the focus of attention would be on cancer victims and their families, not on us. You’d think the real story would be on the marvelous steps that are about to be taken to cure this terrible disease, rather than on how much money a law firm is able to pledge.
Political agendas make some people very mean.
Comment [1]
Ways We Support
Many of us were born and raised in the area and are dedicated to giving back to a community that for generations has been near and dear to our hearts. There are many, many ways to support the health and welfare of a community. Many, many ways to support people in their pursuit of happiness.
In January 2005, the employees of the firm established the SimmonsCooper Employee Charitable Foundation. Our foundation offers volunteer and financial support to local charitable and civic organizations that are making extraordinary efforts to serve those in
These wonderful local organizations have extended a helping hand to many others as well. Particularly important, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and United Way have worked together to set up a shelter housing approximately 160 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
The SimmonsCooper Employee Charitable Foundation has donated eight sets of washers and dryers along with portable kitchen equipment to the shelter.
Do you have an organization that you feel deserves our support? If so, let us know.
SimmonsCooper Employee Charitable Foundation
The employees of the firm established the SimmonsCooper Employee Charitable Foundation on January 31, 2005. In our first year alone, we have worked with organizations such as:
- The American Lung Association…We organized and participated in the Annual Asthma Walk.
- The American Red Cross…We host on-site blood drives.
- The Glen-Ed Food Pantry…We collected school supplies for under-privileged children in the Edwardsville and Glen Carbon communities.
- The American Diabetes Association…We raised money and participated in the annual walk.
- The Bucket Brigade…We organized volunteers to paint and repair the homes of the elderly and physically challenged. From The Alton Telegraph...
- The local Boys and Girls Club of Bethalto, IL…We supported and participated in a work day to renovate local buildings. From the Belleville News Democrat...
Finally, the SimmonsCooper Employee Charitable Foundation has donated in excess of $10,000 through payroll deductions – an expression of support for local charities by all the employees of this law firm.
The Bucket Brigade — From <i>The Alton Telegraph</i>
The 18th Annual Bucket Brigade is completed and once again it was co-sponsored by Pride, Inc., Sherwin Williams, and The Telegraph…Our volunteers have come back year after year in an effort to help others…This year we painted 43 houses….Once again we are so grateful to the hundreds of volunteers from throughout the River Bend area, who spread a lot of TLC, along with the paint. It is a time when ‘neighbor helping neighbor’ comes to life as in the days of old when the original Bucket Brigades were formed as a chain to help neighbors save homes…A very special thanks to all of the returning groups, plus the new groups, who stepped forward this year to extend their time and concern for those who had need of a helping hand. Our motto each year remains the same: ‘The really important things we do in life we do for others.’
From the <i>Belleville News Democrat</i>
Ace Hardware Corp. recently chose the Boys and Girls Club of Bethalto as one of 10 organizations in the country to benefit from the company’s New Faces for Helpful Places program. The program provides funds for community buildings in need of repair. On Wednesday, volunteers renovated the Boys and Girls Club building at 324 E. Central St. in Bethalto. Ace donated $5,000 worth of supplies to help refurbish the city’s Boys and Girls Club building, which is a former elementary school gymnasium. National home improvement expert Lou Manfredini supervised the project and led his ‘Lou Crew’ of 20 volunteers from the SimmonsCooper Employee Charitable Foundation as well as local volunteers in the day-long renovation.
