Hugh Lambert
VerifiedAbout Hugh Lambert
Hugh P. "Skip" Lambert is the founding partner of Lambert Zainey Smith & Soso in New Orleans, with over 50 years of experience in complex maritime, environmental, and mass tort litigation. A mechanical engineer by training, he received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1969 and worked as a production process engineer at General Motors before moving to New Orleans to attend Loyola Law School, where he was Lead Article Editor of the Loyola Law Review. After clerking for U.S. District Judge Blake West and apprenticing under renowned maritime lawyer Frederick J. Gisevius, Jr., he founded the firm in 1977. He specializes in maritime, products liability, toxic tort, environmental, class action, whistleblower, and multi-district litigation, and has been a guest lecturer on environmental law and complex litigation at Tulane University.
Notable case results
Hugh Lambert served on the Plaintiffs Steering Committee in MDL 2047, the sprawling federal litigation against Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin that produced a landmark settlement valued at up to $1 billion to remediate roughly 4,500 sulfur-contaminated homes across Florida, Louisiana, and dozens of other states.
Hugh Lambert served on the court-appointed Plaintiffs Steering Committee that secured a $330 million class action settlement for roughly 6,000 St. Bernard Parish homeowners whose properties were contaminated when Hurricane Katrina dislodged a crude oil storage tank at Murphy Oil's Meraux, Louisiana refinery.
Hugh Lambert, a court-appointed member of the Plaintiffs Steering Committee in MDL 2047, helped negotiate a $248 million settlement against Taishan Gypsum and affiliated manufacturers, resolving the second major tranche of a decade-long federal litigation over sulfur-contaminated Chinese drywall installed in thousands of American homes.
Lambert Zainey represented three former Hanford nuclear site managers who blew the whistle on contractors Bechtel and URS for charging the federal government for deficient nuclear-quality materials and funding illegal lobbying, securing a $125 million False Claims Act settlement in 2016.
Appointed co-lead counsel in the federal Limitation of Liability proceedings, Lambert Zainey represented 14 of the 19 people aboard the Seacor Power, resolving all seven Jones Act death claims, six DOHSA claims, and six survivor claims by November 2023.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
