Parker is a principal in Beasley Allen’s Personal Injury and Products Liability Section. Beginning this year, Parker is joining Beasley Allen’s Atlanta, Georgia, office to assist with the future growth of the office. He is a husband, a father and a fierce advocate for his clients, and since joining the firm in 2008, he has established himself as a force in cases of national significance.
Over the course of his career, clients large and small have trusted Parker in their legal matters. In addition to representing families in a wide variety of catastrophic injury and death cases, Parker has represented governments, large and small businesses, universities, farmers, and fishermen in significant economic damage cases. He has successfully navigated his clients in state and federal courts across the country, whether through a single event, class action and mass action multi-district litigation devices. Through it all, Parker’s guiding principle is to have a lasting, positive influence in the lives of others, and he puts that principle into practice by guiding his clients through the legal process so they can obtain a new, better normal.
Current Cases
Parker currently represents survivors and their families in a wide range of catastrophic injury and death cases. These include premises liability cases where a property owner fails to ensure a premises is reasonably safe, ultimately resulting in the severe injury or death of another. Parker is especially passionate about negligent security cases, a subset of premises liability cases, where innocent people are brutally injured or murdered in apartment complexes, hotels, nightclubs and other establishments because premises owners failed to take basic and necessary security measures. He is also currently investigating and/or litigating significant product liability cases in multiple states on behalf of families. These cases include, for example, guardrails that impale vehicles, furniture that crushes children, and vehicles that needlessly burn, eject, or crush their occupants in crashes. Finally, Parker litigates commercial vehicle crash cases, and he just recently obtained a seven-figure settlement for the victims of a tragic commercial vehicle crash.
Parker also maintains a niche practice representing state governors and state attorney generals in nationally-significant, high stakes cases. To that end, he currently serves as co-lead counsel and deputy attorney general for the State of Alabama against Purdue Pharma L.P., Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and McKesson Corporation, in the historic opioid litigation centered in Cleveland, Ohio. The case seeks to compensate the State of Alabama for the heartbreaking opioid crisis, which has destroyed lives and whole communities. Parker is responsible for helping guide the State’s litigation as well as to prepare the liability and damages case for trial.
Past Notable Cases
Before joining Beasley Allen’s Personal Injury and Products Liability Section, Parker worked in the firm’s Toxic Torts Section, where he maintained a diverse practice and successfully litigated cases on a wide variety of legal topics, including personal injury, toxic exposure, business-on-business product defect litigation, consumer fraud and a large charitable trust dispute.
Parker played a major role in what is considered to be one of the most significant, high-stakes cases in history – the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill litigation. He served as co-lead counsel for the state of Alabama, co-counsel to then-Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, and was deputized a deputy attorney general of the state of Alabama by Attorney General Luther Strange. Parker was a point person for Alabama before the court, served as the architect for the State’s economic and property damage models, and was a member of Alabama’s settlement negotiation team. After years of litigation, BP agreed to pay Alabama $2.3 billion in what is arguably one of the most significant settlements in Alabama’s history. In addition, Transocean agreed to pay the state of Alabama $20 million. At the conclusion of the case, former Alabama Governor and Beasley Allen founder Jere Beasley stated that “His efforts were nothing short of exceptional.”
During the BP Oil Spill litigation, Parker was selected to serve as Beasley Allen’s second chair to the oil spill Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ultimately, the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee reached a landmark, uncapped settlement with BP that has paid more than $14 billion to private claimants throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Parker oversaw the Firm’s fishermen and personal injury clients devastated by the spill. In addition, Parker represented hundreds of businesses throughout the affected area that lost business revenues because of the spill. Ultimately, he recovered tens of millions of dollars in compensation on behalf of his private clients in the litigation.
Awards and Ratings
Parker is rated an AV Preeminent® attorney by Martindale-Hubbell (4.9 out of 5.0) – the highest possible Martindale-Hubbell rating a lawyer can achieve in the categories of legal knowledge, analytical capabilities, judgment, communication ability and legal experience.
In 2012 and again in 2014, Beasley Allen selected him as the Toxic Torts Section Lawyer of the Year. Since 2014, the Super Lawyers publication has designated Parker a “Rising Star” — a designation that recognizes the top 2.5 percent of lawyers younger than 40. Law360, a national legal publication with 150,000 readers and 11 news bureaus, recognized Parker as a “Rising Star” in 2014 and again in 2016, making him just one of four environmental attorneys to make the list.
Professional Affiliations
Parker has been a leading figure in numerous legal organizations. He is the Second Vice Chair of the Products Liability Section of the American Association for Justice (AAJ). Within the Alabama State Bar, he served as President of the Alabama State Bar Young Lawyers Section; a member of the Alabama State Bar President’s Executive Committee; as an at-large State Bar Commissioner; Vice Chair of the Task Force on the Restructure of the Office of General Counsel; Local Bar Task Force Committee Member; Membership Relations Task Force Committee Member; Volunteer Lawyer Program Committee Member; Disability Inactive Status Task Force Committee Member; and a former member of the Alabama Law Institute Council.
Based on his professional achievements and leadership role with numerous organizations, the Alabama State Bar selected Parker to be one of only 30 lawyers in the State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum. The Leadership Forum is a highly competitive Forum that encompasses all legal disciplines – including in-house, criminal prosecution, criminal defense, civil defense and civil plaintiff’s lawyers. His Leadership Forum peers ultimately nominated him as class representative to the State Bar Leadership Forum organization. Parker also won a statewide election to be one of four officers in the Alabama Association for Justice’s Emerging Leaders Caucus. Finally, Parker is currently a member of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association.
Publicity
Over the course of his career, Parker has been quoted in Law360, the Montgomery Advertiser and the Mobile Press-Register. He has also appeared on numerous occasions as either an attorney host or guest on WSFA’s Ask the Attorney, Law Call and the Beasley Allen Report television programs. Parker has also been a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on a wide variety of topics.
Background
Parker graduated high school with honors from Marengo Academy in 2001. He attended Auburn University and received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 2005. He received his law degree from Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law in 2008. While attending law school, Parker was on the Dean’s List, and he studied international law abroad in conjunction with Tulane University at the Universitiet van Amsterdam. In addition, he was recognized by the American College of Trial Lawyers as one of the nation’s finest student advocates and received the Lewis F. Powell Jr. American College of Trial Lawyers Medal for Excellence in Advocacy.
Parker was raised on a cattle farm with two brothers in Dayton, Alabama, and is the son of Mary and Tommy Miller. He is married to the former Ashley Brownsberger of Tampa Bay, Florida, and together they have one daughter, Sophia Elizabeth Miller. They also attend St. Peters Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
