Bradley Beckworth

Brad Beckworth is a nationally recognized trial lawyer whose practice centers on high-stakes, high-profile disputes. Over the course of his career, he has helped secure more than $5 billion in verdicts and settlements for states, sovereign nations, royalty owners, institutional investors, and individual clients. Whether he is in a courtroom, a boardroom, or managing a fast-moving crisis, Brad is known for simplifying complex problems and driving them toward decisive resolution.

Brad has served as lead trial counsel in some of the most closely watched civil cases in recent history. His work includes a $1.68 billion jury verdict in New York on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse; a landmark opioid trial in Oklahoma that resulted in a $465 million verdict against a pharmaceutical manufacturer and helped pave the way for a multibillion-dollar global resolution; and a $160 million verdict in federal court in one of the largest oil and gas royalty class actions ever tried to verdict. In recognition of this work, Brad and his team were honored as National Trial Team of the Year in 2020.

Beyond the courtroom, Brad is frequently called upon by business leaders, public figures, and other high-profile individuals to help them navigate sensitive, time-critical crises. Working closely with longtime colleague Christina Yarnell and other members of his team, he provides strategic counseling, negotiation support, and media-aware crisis management in matters that often unfold under intense public scrutiny. His experience includes representing major sports figures, among them Heisman Trophy winners Johnny Manziel and Kyler Murray, as well as former University of Michigan analyst Connor Stalions in NCAA-related matters.

Brad’s cases and crisis work have been covered by leading national and international media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The New York Times. His work on behalf of investors has been featured in a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative series, and he has appeared as a guest on major television news programs and podcasts. More recently, his work and his clients’ stories have appeared in the Netflix documentary “Sign Stealer”, a number-one-ranked documentary in 2024, and in the YouTube series “Killing Pain,” which received a Heartland Emmy Award in 2020.

Brad’s path to trial work began far from any courtroom. He grew up in Conroe, Texas, then a small rural community, where he worked his way through high school and through Texas A&M University. His jobs included long days on a commercial roofing crew, running a landscaping crew for a developer, and drying cars at a busy car wash. Those experiences shaped his approach to representing people whose livelihoods are on the line and instilled a work ethic that still defines his practice today.

After graduating from Texas A&M, Brad earned his law degree from Baylor Law School and then clerked for the Honorable Richard Schell, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. He began his career in his firm’s original office in Daingerfield, Texas, where he volunteered to try virtually any case he could take to a jury, from pro bono matters for survivors of domestic violence and prisoners’ rights cases to complex personal-injury suits. That early trial experience laid the foundation for a career in which Brad has become a go-to trial lawyer for “bet-the-company” litigation and other matters where the outcome truly matters.

Selected High-Impact Matters

• Helped obtain a nine-figure settlement for the State of Washington in litigation against Johnson & Johnson related to the opioid crisis, following years of contested proceedings on behalf of Washington residents.
• Secured a $160 million jury verdict for a class of royalty owners against Sunoco Logistics LP and Energy Transfer Partners in federal court in Oklahoma, one of the largest oil and gas class action verdicts in the state’s history.
• Served as lead trial counsel for the State of Oklahoma in a pathbreaking public-nuisance case against Johnson & Johnson that resulted in a $465 million verdict and contributed to a $5 billion global settlement with other states.
• Negotiated a $270 million settlement for the State of Oklahoma in litigation against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, including a significant personal contribution from the Sacklers and injunctive relief ending Purdue’s marketing efforts in the state. The settlement helped fund the National Center for Wellness and Recovery at Oklahoma State University, now a leading institution in addiction treatment and prevention research.
• Helped secure $393 million in additional opioid-related settlements for the State of Oklahoma against Teva Pharmaceuticals and national opioid distributors McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal.
• Obtained a $186 million settlement for the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations in a tribal-trust case involving alleged federal mismanagement of over 1.3 million acres of timber land, one of the largest settlements in the nationwide series of tribal trust actions, and a resolution that included significant non-monetary reforms and a formal apology from the Secretary of the Interior.
• Recovered $155 million, plus substantial future financial benefits, for a class of royalty owners in litigation against QEP after proving the company had secretly and systematically taken unlawful deductions from royalty payments.
• Played a key role in securities and financial litigation that produced hundreds of millions of dollars in recoveries for institutional investors, including major settlements involving Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan Chase, Delphi, and Brocade, in cases alleging securities fraud, fiduciary breaches, and mishandled securities-lending investments.
• Served as trial counsel in a declaratory judgment case widely regarded as one of the most important royalty-owner trials in Oklahoma history, securing a judgment clarifying key aspects of Oklahoma royalty law. That decision has had an economic impact estimated in the billions and has led to hundreds of millions of dollars in additional settlements for royalty owners.
• Represented Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel in a high-profile NCAA enforcement matter, resolving the case without any admission of wrongdoing and limiting the sanction to a partial-game suspension, and later led Manziel’s business team as he entered the NFL draft.