MBG - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law
Benjamin Blustein is a civil litigator with more than 25 years of trial experience. His practice focuses on discrimination, civil rights, environmental and whistleblower/public client litigation. Ben has tried numerous cases to verdict in federal and state courts across the country.
Prior to joining Miner, Barnhill & Galland in 2007, Ben served for many years as a civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, where he brought lawsuits to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws. He also served as a voting rights attorney for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C., where he worked to enforce and advance voting rights.
At MBG, Ben represents both individual clients as well as organizations like the NAACP and Sierra Club. In recent years, he has served as a Special Assistant Deputy Attorney General for several states that have sued drug manufacturers for reporting inflated drug prices that resulted in windfall profits at the expense of taxpayers.
Ben is also a trained mediator.
Ben is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Since 2008, he has served on the Chicago area's Legal Committee for Election Protection, a national coalition that provides an Election Day voter hotline and voter protection field programs. Ben is also a volunteer mediator for the Cook County Circuit Court.
Chuck has served as lead counsel for plaintiffs in a number of federal securities class actions, such as in the Pacific Lumber facet of the Drexel Burnham Lambert Group class action litigation, which resulted in a settlement in excess of $140 million. Another lawsuit successfully applied the federal securities laws to land sales transactions, obtaining massive relief for a class of purchasers of land in four failed Colorado recreational real estate developments.
Chuck has been lead counsel for plaintiffs in a number of high-profile class actions, multiplaintiff cases and individual actions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and has tried many such cases to verdict before juries and judges. Several of these lawsuits resulted in recoveries that were, at the time, the largest or among the largest of their kind on record in America. He also represented a large and active public employee union in Illinois for more than twenty years, and in the course of such litigation won a number of landmark lawsuits over the denial of promised benefits.
Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C., was founded in 1971. Today, it's a 17-lawyer firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Governors of the Chicago Council of Lawyers
- Member of the Justice Council of the Center
David Baltmanis joined Miner, Barnhill & Galland in 2011 following judicial clerkships with a federal appellate judge and a federal district judge. He maintains a diverse practice primarily representing individuals and institutional plaintiffs in the areas of complex commercial litigation, class actions, environmental law, employment law, and civil rights. He has also served as defense counsel for non-profit and healthcare organizations in commercial and employment matters. He also advises non-profits and small businesses on contractual matters, discrimination law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. He has extensive experience in state and federal trial courts across the country, and has authored and co-authored merits and amicus briefs in state supreme courts, United States Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Dave has served as a Special Assistant Attorney General for a number of state governments suing dozens of pharmaceutical manufacturers for pricing practices that allegedly violate state false claims, Medicaid fraud and consumer protection laws. Dave has worked as part of the firm's team at all phases of litigation, from discovery through appeal. Collectively, the firm's efforts have secured jury verdicts and settlements for the firm's clients totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Dave has also worked on behalf of individual whistleblowers reporting fraud on the government.
Dave is a member of the Board of Governors of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, Chicago's public interest bar association, and currently serves as its President. He has worked on systemic reform efforts in the area of criminal justice as a part of its Criminal Justice Advisory Committee.
Since 2011, Dave has been a member of the Justice Council of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law's Bluhm Legal Clinic.
Deanna Pihos, a partner at Miner, Barnhill & Galland who specializes in litigation, joined the firm in 2008 after two judicial clerkships, one in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and one in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She divides her time between the Chicago office and Los Angeles, California, and represents clients nationwide.
Job Titles:
- Civil Litigation Partner at Miner
Elizabeth Eberle is a civil litigation partner at Miner, Barnhill & Galland who specializes in complex litigation. Recently, she successfully litigated a multi-state wage-and-hour class action against Humana on behalf of 221 nurses, settling the case after four years for $11.2 million. She also successfully litigated a 13-year-long consumer protection and Medicaid fraud case against more than 20 pharmaceutical manufacturers. The total amount recovered by MBG's clients in this and six other companion cases across the nation is approximately $1.2 billion.
Prior to law school, Betty spent years working in Africa and Europe. Just prior to joining the firm, she taught international law at Omsk State University in Omsk, Russia.
Betty is the former Chair of the Board of the International Practice Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin. Previously, she was Treasurer of the Board of the Appellate Practice Section.
Job Titles:
- Director of Operations & Development
George has served four times as a monitor to oversee compliance with consent decrees in major litigation brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against companies that were accused of plantwide sexual harassment. In this capacity, he was responsible for overseeing compliance with the decrees in question, deciding claims against a large damage fund, hearing appeals from company decisions on sexual harassment claims, and proposing and implementing improvements in the plants' policies to control and reduce sexual harassment.
Job Titles:
- Director of Accounting & Bookkeeping
- Director of Accounting & Bookkeeping Operations
Matthew Owens joined Miner, Barnhill & Galland following judicial clerkships with a federal district judge and a federal appellate judge. He has represented plaintiffs in civil rights, consumer protection, wage and hour, and environmental justice cases, including:
Matt is a graduate of Stanford Law School. During law school, he worked at a pro bono legal clinic, where he defended tenants from unlawful evictions and recovered unpaid wages for workers, including a class action to compensate more than 2,400 janitors for minimum wage violations. Outside of his work at the clinic, Matt served as a senior editor for the Stanford Law Review and provided research assistance for a poverty law textbook.
Matt is a volunteer attorney for the Election Protection program run by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, which works to eliminate barriers to voting and civic participation. He also serves on the Chicago Council of Lawyers, a public interest bar association dedicated to achieving a justice system that is accessible, effective, and fair.
Robert Libman is an experienced civil litigator who joined Miner, Barnhill & Galland in 2004 after more than a dozen years in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and a two year federal judicial clerkship. He has more than three decades of experience representing private parties and government clients as plaintiffs in a wide array of complex civil litigation in the public interest, including false claims, consumer protection, civil rights, and environmental litigation.
Bob is client-oriented, working closely and collaboratively with each of his clients to determine her or his goals and developing strategies to achieve them. More than anything, Bob views his role as a problem-solver, presenting options to each of his clients that identify risks and benefits based on his experience so that each client may make an informed judgment about how best to achieve her or his goals.
Ryan Miller joined Miner, Barnhill & Galland in 2018 following a judicial clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is dedicated to advancing economic and social justice for marginalized individuals and groups, including representing plaintiffs in wage and hour, environmental, and civil rights cases.
Sarah has been a featured speaker on environmental litigation at conferences hosted by the Sierra Club and the Impact Fund.
Job Titles:
- Sierra Club As Trial Counsel
Scott Entin has over 15 years of complex litigation experience. Scott understands how to effectively manage large-scale, complex and high-stakes matters through trial and appeal. Through his practice, Scott protects the environment, people and their property from toxic industrial pollution; represents government and individuals in fraud and consumer protection cases; and fights against discrimination and civil rights abuses. He represents advocacy groups, individuals, state governments and classes across the country. Scott listens to his clients and works with them to find lasting solutions to their problems.
Scott has worked with Sierra Club as trial counsel in Clean Air Act litigation and counseled many individual clients and advocacy groups on air and water contamination issues. Currently, Scott represents numerous individual plaintiffs suing a medical sterilization company for personal injuries caused by its excessive and dangerous air emissions, serving on the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee in those cases, and co-leads a nuisance/negligence class of more than 100,000 residents suing a steel manufacturer for infringing their property rights.