ABOUT WINOCOUR LAW

Representing Texas’ injured, disenfranchised, and oppressed for 130 years.

Jonathan Winocour and Mike C. Miller share a common heritage of fighting for personal injury victims that began in the last decade of the nineteenth century.

In 1889, Jonathan’s great-grandfather, a twenty-one year old East Texan, stepped away from his mule and his plow in Harleton, deep in Harrison County. He “read law” and was admitted to the bar. Finally, he established a practice in the county seat of Marshall, a thriving railroad town that had just eclipsed the riverport city of Jefferson in Marion County to the northeast in the competition to transport freight to and from the expanding west.

During his career, S.P. Jones argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of an injured railroad worker, persuading the Court workers injured on the railroad could recover damages under the Federal Employees Liability Act, even if the injury occurred while the workers were engaged in intrastate commerce, so long as the road served interstate commerce. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U.S. 33 (1916).

In 1949 his son, Jonathan’s maternal grandfather, William Franklin Jones, became one of the founding directors of the Plaintiff’s Attorneys Association of Texas, (later the Texas Association of Claimants Attorneys, today the Texas Trial Lawyers Association), which lobbies at the state level to protect the interests of those injured by the negligence of corporate and individual actors.

Thus, at its founding, the Association was clear:

The purpose of this organization shall be the advancement of the cause of those who are damaged in person and property and who must seek redress therefor at law; to resist the constant efforts that are now being made to curtail the rights of such persons; to encourage cooperation between lawyers engaged in the furtherance of such objectives; and through such cooperation to promote justice and human welfare.

Franklin was so committed to the rights of the injured, and more generally to the cause of justice, that he was held in contempt and jailed in 1960 for mentioning insurance during a closing argument. Ex Parte Franklin Jones, Sr. 331 S.W.2d 202 (Tex. 1960). Furthermore, the insurance defense lawyer had opened the door by asking the jury in his argument not to deprive his client of his own money by compensating the plaintiff, even though the defendant was insured.

In 1987, Jonathan’s uncle, Franklin Jones, Jr. became President of the State Bar of Texas. Then, in 1988, Mike Miller joined Jones, Jones and Baldwin, Inc. Mentored by the firm, Mike developed expertise in prosecuting Federal Employee Liability Act (FELA) cases against the railroad.

Mike and Jonathan have a need to seek justice bred back four generations.

They came up in an often overlooked Texas tradition aligned against the cruelty of carelessness and corporate malfeasance.

Over their careers, they have developed expertise and experience in Personal Injury law, including Severe Bodily Injury, Catastrophic Loss, and Survival Actions & Wrongful Death, Federal Civil Rights law, Commercial Litigation, Misdemeanor and Felony Defense, and Employment & Benefits law.

They have fully focused their practice to honor a longstanding commitment to protect and advance the rights of injured, displaced, poor, and unfairly treated Texans.