Lawdragon has named three Reese Marketos partners – Joel Reese, Pete Marketos and Josh Russ – to its prestigious 2025 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers list, an honor that recognizes more than 20 percent of the firm’s attorney headcount.
This list honors commercial plaintiff lawyers who “give consumers, investors and businesses a fighting chance against corporations and other powerful entities that can sometimes seem too big to confront.”
“Not these lawyers. They say bring it on,” Lawdragon wrote when announcing the list.
“Bring it on” is the default phrase in these lawyers’ vocabulary when handling high-stakes plaintiff’s commercial litigation. For example, in March, a trial team led by Reese won a $52 million judgment for Cardinal Midstream in Beaver County, Pennsylvania in a contract dispute it brought against midstream giant Energy Transfer. Eighteen days later, a trial team led by Marketos successfully took on corporate behemoth Johnson & Johnson by winning a $1.6 billion final judgment from a False Claims Act case the team tried last year against J&J subsidiary Janssen Products. (Russ also played a significant role on both trial teams as well as RM partners Andrew Wirmani and Adam Sanderson and associate Whitney Wendel).
Reese, Marketos and Russ were all recognized on this list for their commercial litigation practice. Separately, Russ was also recognized for his practice representing whistleblowers in False Claims Act litigation. After four-and-a-half years prosecuting FCA cases in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas, Russ launched RM’s FCA practice in late 2019. Russ departed the Eastern District as its chief civil prosecutor.
Some of Russ’s other wins since launching RM’s False Claims Act practice include a $100 million settlement with PharMerica, a $36 million jury verdict against MD Helicopters, and a $3.5 million settlement with Catholic Health System.