Archie Carl Pierce - Austin, TX

I was born in Bryan while my Dad was attending veterinary school at Texas A&M. I was raised in the Galena Park/North Shore area of East Houston. That is the "north shore" of the ship channel. I attended the University of Texas where I met my future wife Jo. To the surprise of many, primarily my parents, I graduated from the University and was fortunate enough to be granted admission by the kind folks at the University of Houston to their very fine law school. At this time, I decided it was time to try studying for a change. That endeavor was made easier by the fact that I always wanted to be a lawyer and enjoyed law school. I, in fact, distinguished myself to some extent by becoming a member of the Houston Law Review and by being admitted into the Order of Barons (the highest honorary legal scholastic society at the University of Houston Law School).

Jo, being from the small town of Lockhart just south of Austin, would have nothing to do with living in Houston. So upon graduating from law school, we moved back to Austin and I became a briefing attorney for Judge H.P. Green on the Court of Criminal Appeals. Shortly thereafter, good fortune shined upon me again and I was hired as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas. In that job, I came under the tutelage of several fine trial lawyers and discovered I had some talent in that regard. I tried over 40 jury trials while at the U.S. Attorney's Office and appeared over a dozen times before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. One of my most notable trials was the prosecution of Jimmy Chagra on drug charges after the assassination of Judge John H. Wood Jr. That trial was chronicled in the book “Dirty Dealing.” Another trial of mine, involving the failed assassination attempt on a grand jury witness that resulted in the death of two innocent bystanders, was chronicled in the book “The Rio Grande Sniper Killings.”

In 1984, I went into private practice with a group of lawyers, many of whom I continue to practice with to this day and consider my dear friends. Since that time, I have tried over 50 civil jury trials in state and federal court.

Representative Work

For the past 34 years, my trial practice has been on the civil side of the docket, including prosecuting and defending all types of personal injury and damage claims, examples of which include:

• Serving as one of the lead attorneys of the Wright & Greenhill trial team that prosecuted civil Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act cases against three of the largest generic drug manufacturers in the world and obtained settlements resulting in payments of $300 million dollars to the State of Texas and the United States;
• Obtaining no liability verdicts for police officers and municipalities in four different excessive force cases;
• Obtaining a no liability verdict for a school bus operator arising out of the death of six-year old special needs student;
• Obtaining no liability verdicts in two different cases for drivers alleged to have wrongfully caused the death of a pedestrian;
• Obtaining a no liability verdict for a municipal utility district alleged to have engaged in sexual discrimination against one of its employees;
• Obtaining a judgment in excess of $840,000 against a California corporation for contaminating a municipal utility district’s water wells after the failure of a sewage lift station.