Cutting-Edge Cases, Individualized Approach: How Mass Tort Boutique Wagstaff & Cartmell Brings the Midwest Nationwide

Sarah Ruane and Tom Cartmell of Wagstaff & Cartmell. The Kansas City firm litigates historic, sprawling mass torts with personal attention and a Midwestern outlook.

If you placed thousands of injured individuals, over 400 school districts and the residents of dozens of counties in a room, they would all have one thing in common: They’re currently represented by the team at powerhouse mass tort firm Wagstaff & Cartmell.

The other thing they’d have in common: They’d all feel like they are the only ones who are.

The leading trial boutique has spearheaded some of the most high-stakes, complex litigations on record, securing billions of dollars for critically injured individuals from underrepresented populations nationwide. They’ve held key leadership positions in landmark litigations ranging from historic opioids cases and pelvic mesh litigation to innovative newer litigations including cases against social media and weight loss injection companies.

Yet, through it all, the lawyers have upheld a commitment to the personal – eschewing the expectations of mass torts and treating every plaintiff’s case as if it stands alone.

“One of my favorite parts of the job is having those one-on-one connections,” says managing partner Sarah Ruane.

That individualized approach stems from a distinctly Midwestern outlook. Though they work on cases nationwide, since its inception, Wagstaff & Cartmell has maintained a single-office structure out of Kansas City. That Midwest base provides a centralized, boutique feel on a broad scale. “We are a Kansas City boutique litigation firm,” says founding partner Tom Cartmell. While the size of their cases could suggest office openings in L.A. or New York, “It’s not the fabric of our law firm,” he explains.

The firm was founded by Kansas City natives Cartmell and Tom Wagstaff in 1997. The pair had worked together at a major defense firm and decided to start their own firm with just a couple other lawyers and a law clerk. Within the first few years they began making the switch over to the plaintiffs’ side – especially Cartmell, who represents almost entirely plaintiffs today. Now, the firm focuses on mass actions, class actions, personal injury, public entity representation and a devoted appellate practice on a national scale. “Our mission has been taking cases that matter and make a difference in the world,” Cartmell says.

In the last 28 years, the firm has expanded to nearly 40 attorneys, currently helmed by Cartmell and Ruane. Yet, the firm has maintained a focused, local boutique feel that prioritizes quality over quantity. Unlike larger mass tort firms that might focus on accumulating thousands of cases and clients, Wagstaff & Cartmell lawyers are incredibly selective about the cases they take on, affording them the capacity to give each case the individual attention it deserves.

“We’re structured in a way where if we make the decision that we’re going to be involved in a case, we want to do be involved and do the work,” Cartmell explains.

That commitment to working up each matter individually makes the firm sought-after for referrals. When firms that may not have their own mass tort practice need to pass on a larger action, the Wagstaff team acts as a dependable caretaker of the case. With a respected reputation for quality advocacy, lawyers in the Midwest and nationwide know their case will receive devoted attention to detail in the hands of Wagstaff attorneys, backed by a broad base of vital knowledge and Midwestern empathy.

That Midwestern sensibility informs a closeness that is felt by attorneys, staff, clients and co-counsel, as well.

“From the very beginning, we were never pitted against each other – [the partners] never made things competitive as far as who was getting a certain case,” says Ruane, who has spent her entire legal career with the firm. “As a result, we’re all really good friends still, and we pitch in on each other’s cases without worrying about the end effect on our caseload or our compensation because everybody has taken the same approach. You don’t have to be looking over your shoulder; you can just focus on doing great work with people you genuinely like.”

Working well together within the firm is also critical to their work outside it. Mass actions are an inherently interconnected and collaborative world, and with so much practice working well together internally, Wagstaff & Cartmell lawyers are able to partner effectively with firms nationwide – bringing extensive, rare and necessary experience working with other lawyers in a noncompetitive environment.

In the end, it all comes back to the client. If they work well together, it’s because the lawyers at Wagstaff & Cartmell know they have been charged with the awesome responsibility of alleviating the burden for clients who have been wronged.

“At the beginning of a plaintiffs’ case, I always tell the client, ‘You've already done your hard part. Now, you're handing it to us,” Cartmell says. “Sometimes it's heavy to hold it on your own. So if you're feeling that heaviness, remind yourself that it's our turn to hold it now.”

PELVIC MESH MDLS: HISTORIC, WOMEN-CENTERED LITIGATION

Among the most significant of the firm’s mass actions has been their work on the Pelvic Repair System Products Liability Litigation MDL. The team spearheaded thousands of cases, representing women who were critically injured after being treated with abdominal and transvaginal surgical mesh. In particular, Cartmell was appointed co-lead counsel of the Ethicon MDL in the Southern District of West Virginia.

“Those cases are a highlight of my career – helping these women, seeing how they felt empowered and seeing the impact it had on their lives,” Cartmell says.

The MDL closed in 2022, and it was widely reported to be the nation’s largest mass tort in history at the time, with $8B in settlements. The Wagstaff & Cartmell team handled five bellwether trials and more opt-out trials than any other firm.  

The opt-out cases go back to that crucial part of the firm’s identity – allowing each and every plaintiff to have control over their own case with a deeply personalized approach.

“One way to make sure that mass torts stay a practice with integrity is by ensuring that everybody still has their own individual case and they still get to make their own individual decisions,” Cartmell says.

“We need to do what’s right for each client,” Ruane agrees.

One of those cases was on behalf of a woman named Virgina Redding against Coloplast Corporation, alleging that their pelvic mesh implant had caused severe medical problems after it was used to treat her pelvic organ prolapse in 2009. She did not experience her most significant symptoms until five years later. A Florida jury returned a $2.5M judgement for Redding in 2022, which was recently upheld on appeal.

I always tell the client, ‘You've already done your hard part. Now, you're handing it to us . . . it's our turn to hold it now.'

Redding was far from the only client Wagstaff & Cartmell lawyers supported in taking their own path, and that support called for a nearly firmwide effort. At one point, almost three quarters of the firm was pitching in to work up the mesh trials; in one wave of the MDL, the team was handling close to a hundred cases. It’s in those kinds of high-pressure situations that the lawyers’ ability to rely on a cohesive team is vital.

Another client was an older woman who recorded a video of herself playing Christmas carols on the piano as a way of thanking the team for their effort on her behalf. The video was played at the firm’s holiday party.

“You do make sacrifices in this job. And then you have moments like that where you think, ‘Wow, okay, we’re doing this for the right reasons,’” Ruane says.

In another mesh case, she remembers representing an injured grandmother. With the incredibly private and sensitive nature of the injuries in the transvaginal mesh cases, especially, Ruane says it was key to have that team on hand to make the best lawyer-client pairs. Having a woman on the team often made clients like that grandmother feel more comfortable when discussing the impacts their injuries had on their lives.

Ruane has focused on issues disproportionately affecting women for her entire career. In college, Ruane studied sociology and Spanish, concentrating on issues faced by immigrant women, particularly those within the hospitality industry. She wanted to go into public policy and health, but wasn’t inclined to go into government work. When she started at Wagstaff & Cartmell, she realized there was a path forward for her.

“When I came over, I realized that they had found another way to make a difference in public health that wasn’t legislative,” Ruane says. “There actually is a world where people are working really hard as lawyers to help people day-to-day and make a difference in individuals’ lives.”   

When it comes to litigation that affects women, like the transvaginal mesh cases – or another litigation she’s working on, against the manufacturers of chemical hair straighteners – Ruane says that the general public is finally waking up to the fact that women’s health has been impacted by consumer products in unique ways.

“Unfortunately, there will always be products, medications and changes in other parts of our society – including things like social media – that often have a disparate impact on women,” says Ruane. “Having a law firm that recognizes that from the very beginning allows us to better represent them and to consider the impact of that on their day-to-day life as they're going through the litigation.”

OZEMPIC AND INNOVATION

Another allegedly defective consumer product marketed disproportionately toward women are GLP-1s, medications used to treat obesity and diabetes – and that have rapidly become popular weight loss solutions, especially in major brands like Ozempic.

“GLP-1s are of course not prescribed only to women, and from a diabetic perspective, endocrinologists are prescribing them to a wide variety of people,” Ruane says. “But I knew they would be marketed to women in a unique way. So, I was really interested from the beginning.”

One of the advantages of having spent decades in this area of law is that the Wagstaff & Cartmell lawyers have a sense of when a consumer product is likely to wreak havoc and spur on litigation. Ruane had that instinct about GLP-1s like Ozempic. From the moment they became popular, Ruane began following the news on the products, talking with fellow lawyers at conferences nationwide, waiting to see if cases would develop.

She was right. When the opportunity came to apply for leadership in the ensuing mass tort, Ruane was appointed co-lead counsel. A year and a half into the MDL, the litigation is in phase one of discovery, suing GLP-1 manufacturers including Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly for complications resulting from medications including Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus and Mounjaro.

That well-honed instinct for the genesis of impactful litigation has allowed the firm to have the confidence to take on innovative cases other firms are often hesitant to try. “We have excellent perspective from earlier litigation on what kinds of cases we care about and can really litigate effectively,” Ruane says. That perspective, she explains, allows the team to look at new products on the market with a critical eye as to what adverse effects could be present or could develop in the future – meaning Wagstaff & Cartmell’s lawyers are consistently one step ahead.

And, even in this age of the disappearing jury trial, if a case needs to go to court, the Wagstaff team is not only prepared, but eager to get in front of a jury. “If it comes down to it and a case needs to be tried because that’s the right thing for that client, we are not a firm that runs scared,” Ruane says.

REPRESENTING PUBLIC ENTITIES: JUUL, SOCIAL MEDIA, OPIOIDS AND MORE

The firm also boasts an extensive public entity practice that dovetails with representing  individuals; in fact, in the transvaginal mesh litigation against Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon, Cartmell also represented both the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the State of Oregon. In the historic opioid litigation, meanwhile, Cartmell represented two dozen counties – including Buchanan County in neighboring Missouri, which faced one of the highest rates of opioid prescriptions nationwide.

Cartmell currently represents hundreds of school districts in litigation against social media companies and e-cigarette companies like Juul, tackling the emerging problems that are facing today’s young people. He represented 350 school districts in the Juul litigation and was appointed to serve as Government Entity Liaison Counsel for the plaintiffs.

“Trying those cases and getting to know the difficulties these school districts have suffered and the resources they’ve lost affecting the educational process and then seeing them fight like that – that was special,” Cartmell says.

In the social media litigation, in federal court, Cartmell is a member of the Local Government Entities Sub-Committee in the Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury MDL NO. 3047 in the Northern District of California. Currently, the MDL has reached nearly 2,000 active cases alleging that social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube were designed to addict teen users to the apps, despite a knowledge and failure to warn of mental health risks such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm and even suicide. 

If it comes down to it and a case needs to be tried because that’s the right thing for that client, we are not a firm that runs scared.

In state court, he is serving as a member of the plaintiffs steering committee for judicial council coordination proceeding (JCCP) No. 5255 in L.A. Superior Court. These cases will be proceeding first, beginning with a personal injury case on behalf of a young woman. The first tranche of cases following the initial case is scheduled to begin in November of this year. Cartmell will be trying that first case, along with co-counsel including L.A.-based Rahul Ravipudi of Panish | Shea | Ravipudi and attorneys with Beasley Allen out of Alabama and The Lanier Law Firm from New York – a true nationwide effort.

Cartmell has helmed a plethora of expansive class actions and MDLs over the years, and Ruane is a rapidly rising star in mass tort leadership, as well. In these positions, Cartmell describes his leadership style as “inclusive.”

“I want to make sure that I have a team of really good people around me doing the work,” he says. “When I’m a co-lead of a case, I try to create a team atmosphere like we do within our firm.”

Ruane agrees. Having been a member of that team for so long, she’s picked up on how to motivate a group of lawyers. “We learned it all from Tom and Tom, but what motivates people is feeling heard, appreciated and like they get input. That keeps the team improving, and we all make each other better,” she says. “Finding ways to do that when you’re scattered across the country and everybody’s busy, that’s the big challenge.”

But it is that team aspect that the Wagstaff & Cartmell lawyers find most rewarding about their work – whether that’s a team of co-counsel on a national MDL, the team within the firm, or the team that they create with their clients. 

“It will never not blow my mind that I get paid to travel and meet with really smart doctors, lawyers and judges and solve problems together,” says Ruane. “And when you add on top of that the really great stories of the ways we’ve been able to make things just a little bit better on any given day for our clients, it is so fulfilling. We have such an amazing team that I don’t feel like I’m making them empty promises.”