Complex Personal Injury; Products Liability; Insurance Litigation; Aviation Litigation; Accident Reconstruction; Industrial/Construction Accidents

Jay graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1983, where he participated in UNC’s trial advocacy and clinical legal education programs. He earned his undergraduate degree at Duke University in 1979, where he majored in mathematics, but also focused on physics and literature. While a student, Jay was President of the Duke’s Old Trinity Club, and he played Rugby for Duke, UNC and the North Carolina Select Side.

Since he joined the bar, Jay has always been a trial lawyer, representing people in matters that may go to trial. Jay has litigated cases in state courts across North Carolina. He has also litigated in federal courts in North and South Carolina. For his work as a trial lawyer, Jay has been honored with the highest professional rating a lawyer can receive from the Martindale-Hubbell rating service, an AV, and by being listed in Best Lawyers in America.

Jay began to develop his trial skills right after law school by starting out as an assistant public defender in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He chose that work, in part, because as a public defender, he could get more courtroom experience in a few years than many lawyers get in their entire careers. He was not disappointed.

After developing his trial skills at the public defender’s office, Jay began what has been his career-long focus on civil cases, beginning in 1986 with a law firm in Fayetteville, and since 1988, when he moved to Durham, with TBSR. His most common cases include crashes involving buses, tractor-trailers and cars; electrocutions, fires and explosions; workplace accidents; dangerous structures or conditions on property; and cases involving defective products such as nail guns, riding mowers, LP gas tanks, water heaters, boilers, and SUVs.

In addition to his work representing the severely injured and families of those who have been killed, Jay also represents consumers who have been victimized by their health, disability and life insurance companies or by their ERISA plans.

Jay is often called upon to teach other lawyers and has done that on a wide range of topics for members of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers (NCATL), the Tennessee Association of Trial Lawyers (TTLA) and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). He is also often asked to write about his areas of expertise and is the author of the chapter entitled “Insurance Law Primer for Bodily Injury Claims” in the N.C. General Practice Deskbook, of chapters entitled “Products Liability” and “Woodson Claims” in the NCATL Prima Facie Manual, and of many papers for continuing legal education seminars. Within the organization of trial lawyers in North Carolina, NCATL, he serves on its Board of Governors, Public Education Committee, and Legal Affairs Committee, and he was formerly Chair of its Products Liability Section. He actively participates as a member of ATLA’s Bad Faith Litigation Group, which focuses on illegal conduct by insurance companies, and of the Attorneys Information Exchange Group (AIEG), which focuses on dangerously defective motor vehicles.