Tucson attorney honored for water lawsuit

A Tucson attorney was among a team given a prestigious Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for winning $150 million for South Side residents made sick by contaminated water.

At its annual dinner in Seattle, the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation on Tuesday presented the award to Richard Gonzales, who heads his own law firm, and seven Dallas attorneys who worked on the case.

"It's inspiring and humbling," Gonzales said Wednesday.

Gonzales, who grew up in the Sunnyside neighborhood affected by groundwater contamination, personifies the word "tenacity," the TLPJ said in a news release.

Following 25 years of legal battles, 1,618 people who sued over trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination were awarded more than $150 million.

Hughes Aircraft and the city of Tucson were accused of dumping TCE in the water table for 29 years, beginning in 1952. The lawsuit arose when Sunnyside residents - many of them children - started contracting cancer at high rates.

One of the reasons the Tucson case was chosen for the honor, the TLPJ said, is that it set important precedents for insurance coverage. Now, liability policies are triggered for toxic injury claims at the time of the exposure through the diagnosis, which may be decades later.

Gonzales teaches public-interest law to first-year students at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law.

"It's part of our sacred trust as stewards of the justice system," he said.