Jill Pierce

JILL S. PIERCE, PLLC

Jill Swearingen Pierce, a native of Southeast Texas, graduated from Baylor University in 1990 and earned her law degree from Baylor University School of Law in 1993.  Jill practices in the areas of personal injury, products liability and employment discrimination.  Jill is licensed to practice before all Courts of the State of Texas, and the United States District Court of the Eastern District and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Jill is also licensed to practice law in the State of Louisiana. 

Ms. Pierce practiced law at Provost Umphrey law firm beginning in 1995 as an associate.  She became a Non-Equity Partner at that firm in 1999. In 2006, she joined the firm that became Bradley, Steele and Pierce as a partner. Since 2020, she has practiced as a solo practitioner.

Ms. Pierce became Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in 2001 and was re-certified in 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021.

In 1999, Ms. Pierce tried the case of Mark Umphrey v. Fina, a case brought under Texas law that prohibits an employer from discriminating against employees who have been injured on the job and avail themselves of their rights under Texas Workers’ Compensation law.  Ms. Pierce received a jury verdict of $2,400,000.  At the time of the verdict, this was the largest jury award in the State of Texas in a workers’ compensation discrimination case.

In May 2001, Ms. Pierce tried the case of Nancy Goolsby v. Baxter Healthcare Corporation.  This products liability case was based on Baxter’s alleged failure to warn users of their latex gloves of the potential for users to develop potentially deadly allergic reactions to their product.  The jury awarded Ms. Pierce’s client $3,075,000.  This verdict was one of the largest in the nation in the latex glove litigation.

In January 2019, Ms. Pierce was lead counsel in a wrongful death case tried in Federal Court in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Ms. Pierce’s client’s husband was killed while performing maintenance on a valve on an offshore pipeline operated by Chevron Pipeline Company.  After a week-long trial, the jury awarded Ms. Pierce’s client $2,940,000 in damages as a result of the death of her husband. Chevron Pipeline appealed the verdict to the Fifth Circuit on the basis of the statutory employer immunity doctrine and on the basis that the damage award was excessive. After oral argument, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the verdict in favor of the plaintiff on both issues.

In 2018, Ms. Pierce was the subject of a Texas Monthly article regarding her representation of an eighteen-year-old, gay city councilman who was the subject of a political smear campaign which resulted in a recall petition against the city councilman.  Although this is not the type of law Ms. Pierce normally practices, she felt this young man deserved representation during a time which he was especially vulnerable. Ms. Pierce and her client are currently under contract with a movie production company that has written a screenplay about the recall petition against her client and the litigation that ensued.