Our mission at McMath Woods P.A. is to provide each of our clients with the most effective ethical representation possible, and to preserve and promote the civil justice system.

What McMath Law Firm Does and Who We Represent

With the exception of our environmental practice, the firm exclusively represents individuals and small business that have been injured or wronged. Most of our work is done for individuals on contingency fee, or court awarded fees basis. That is, we only get paid if our clients prevail. All consultations are free and confidential. We handle personal injury, environmental cases, and pesticide damage claims outside Arkansas. We refer prospective clients where appropriate without charge.

All of our attorneys have litigation experience in the particular areas in which they practice. We are particularly proud that most of our work is referred by other attorneys, and we frequently work in association with referring council on significant claims. The firm and most of the individual attorneys are A/V rated by Martindale Hubble. (See Attorney Profiles).

There are few plaintiff's firms in Arkansas with a broader experience in civil litigation. The firm has handled over five thousand personal injury claims, from car wrecks, medical injury, and defective products, to toxic exposures. Firm attorneys have pioneered several product and pharmaceutical defects. In the environment we have represented individuals impacted by leaking storage tanks and whole communities impacted by air pollution from local industries. We have handled pesticide crop damage claims from South Texas to Florida. From employer abuse, insurance claims, to ADA there are few areas of civil litigation that we do not have experience in.

McMath Woods P.A., has evolved from a firm founded by Sidney S. McMath, Leland F. Leatherman and Henry Woods in 1953. The three were active in the G.I. political reform movement in Arkansas after World War II. The movement sought to overthrow the entrenched special political interests of that time. McMath was elected prosecuting attorney of Garland County and successfully ejected the mob from Hot Springs. He was subsequently elected Governor of Arkansas where he pursued a progressive agenda. Woods served as McMathÃs chief of staff, and Leatherman served as chairman of the utility regulatory commission.

After McMath's two terms as Governor, the three established their law firm and dedicated their practice to representing the rights and interests of workers, victims of personal injury and consumers. McMath and Woods developed a national reputation in these areas. McMath was ultimately elected President of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and Woods was appointed United States district court judge.

McMath Woods P.A. continues to provide aggressive and innovative representation in the original areas of practice. The firm pursues additional areas of practice, including insurance claims, environmental, commercial torts and class action consumer suits.

McMath Woods P.A. reflects the values that guided the original firm, operating on the belief that the civil justice system, while a means for securing individual justice, is also an essential tool for regulating private behavior for the benefit of society at large. Every true plaintiff's lawyer is a public interest lawyer committed to the pursuit of justice, both inside and outside the courtroom. Every case, for such a lawyer, is an opportunity to make a difference.

The concept of freedom, equality of opportunity and dignity for all citizens is the basis and bulwark of our national pride and our nation's strength. America's passion for equal justice is the unifying force that binds us together.

However, experience has taught us that these human rights are not secure unless they can be made good by a lawyer in a court of law. In a free market economy the same is true of our rights as consumers, workers and stockholders.

The powerful, whether state or corporation, will always represent a threat to the rights and interest of the average citizen unless the law provides protection. Yet, however enlightened, the law is powerless to vindicate the right of the individual without an independent bar of Trial Lawyers.

It often seems as if lawyers and the judicial system itself are held in low esteem in our country. Such ill repute has doubtless been brought on, in some measure, by bad lawyers and incompetent judges. However, much more of it is quite literally manufactured by special interests that wish to be free of the constraints that the law places upon their own careless even greedy conduct.

It is a measure of the success of our system, and its ability to bring the powerful to heal that such organized efforts have been mounted to slander the trial bar. When accusations are made about greedy lawyers, it is useful to consider where the claim is coming from. It is invariably some interest that is seeking to remove itself from accountability under the law, that does not want its conduct reviewed by a jury of ordinary citizens free of concerns for political patronage or commercial influence.

Often in the context of derisive humor, we hear the Shakespearean quote, "First, we will kill all the lawyers." This quote is never put into context. Dick the Butcher, who uttered those words, was a scoundrel and a rogue. The lawyers he would kill were the members of society standing firm and holding the line against chaos and tyranny.

Today Dick the Butcher takes the form of "think tanks" funded by the liability insurance industry, pharmaceutical, and chemical manufacturers and others who would be freed of their responsibility to consider the consumers interest, not just their profits. Such entities are dedicated to spewing propaganda against the civil justice system. Their goal is to undermine the simple but foundational values that are the common law and to replace them with restrictive legislation purchased with political favors.

Recently, America have been shocked by the extent of corruption that has been revealed in the executive suits of the corporate world. They are shocked at what corporate leaders have been willing to do to add further to already bountiful even obscene personal wealth. However, this has been no revelation to those of us who labor in the civil justice system. While rarely drawing attention, the trial bar's stock in trade is discovering and rectifying the consequences of corporate negligence, greed and fraud. From insurance companies and financial institutions that bilk the old and unsophisticated, to corporations that sell dangerous vehicle with knowledge of design defects because the market cycle demand a new product on time.

It is well and good to talk about and encourage morality and ethics in corporate conduct, but society should never assume that it will actually take place. The genius of the free market system is that it harnesses the inevitable impulse to pursue self-interest. This, however, is also its great weakness. There will always be those, especially in the corporate setting, that will have trouble discerning the proper limits of this pursuit. This means that we must have a system of justice that will bring the excessive pursuit of self-interest to account.

It is the nature of the corporate entity that no single individual is responsible for corporate conduct. As we have seen, even the CEO can make a plausible denial. Only a system of justice that makes a reckoning a probability will provide the moral corporate officer the rational to insist upon restraint in corporate behavior. Adam Smith's invisible hand must in fact be a pair of hands, if society is to uniformly benefit, one to do the nations commerce, the other to wash the former of its excesses and transgressions.

Those who would "kill the lawyers" which is to say the common law, need find replacements. Who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence and discrimination? Who will be the champions of those victims of corporate abuse or bureaucratic tyranny? If those who would "kill the lawyers" offer any substitute at all, it is a witless and powerless bureaucracy that can be manipulated by the interest involved in ways that a jury cannot.

Or course, not all destructive conduct is corporate in nature. Much of what the civil justice system addresses is individual carelessness. Even here, however, there is societal purpose. Especially in a free society, every citizen has responsibilities to others in the community. Every day the civil justice system passes judgment on the conduct of individuals. Without it we would be left only with the crude and clumsy hand of criminal justice to define the limits of proper conduct.

Our civil judicial system and the common law upon which it is based makes it possible for our diverse, complex democratic free market society to function. As long as we have an independent judiciary who, hopefully, won their spurs in the courtroom before ascending the bench, so long as we have the "12 good men and true" and so long as we have trial lawyers, throughout the width and breadth of our land, in small communities and great cities, who stand ready to do combat and to spill their blood on the courtroom floor for their clients - rich or poor, black or white, whatever their persuasion - our rights as American citizens will be secure.

Italicized portions extracted from Trial Lawyer by Major General Sidney S. McMath USMC, former Governor of Arkansas, Past President of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and founding partner of McMath Woods P.A.

At McMath Woods P.A., we believe that we have a professional obligation to defend the civil justice system. We also believe that every citizen has an obligation to be informed about the assault on the civil justice system. Accordingly, we seek to inform each of our clients regarding the erosion of their rights that have taken place that impact the vitality of their claim, as well as to inform them of the potential for future erosion of their rights. The following are links to informative articles dealing with the misinformation campaign of the so called "tort reform" movement.