June 4, 2018 – Jason Hatfield has been selected among America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators for 2018. Selection to America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators is by invitation only and is reserved to identify the nation’s most exceptional trial attorneys in high stakes legal matters, and less than one-half percent (0.5%) of active attorneys in the United States will receive this honor.
To be considered for selection, an attorney must have litigated (for either plaintiff or defendant) a matter (1) with at least $2,000,000 in alleged damages at stake or (2) with the fate of a business worth at least $2,000,000 at stake. These minimum qualifications are required for initial consideration. Thereafter, candidates are carefully screened through a broad array of criteria, including the candidate’s professional experience, litigation experience, significant case results, peer reputation, and community impact.
Jason has dedicated his practice to representing seriously injured Arkansans resulting from unsafe work environments and unsafe products. Early in his career he represented a retired military veteran that sustained serious brain injury and paralysis as a result of a tractor trailer collision. The tractor trailer had stalled in the fast lane of the interstate in the dead of night. The manufacturer had failed to produce the trailer with conspicuity tape after independent research companies and the federal government had recommended the changes to save lives. The stalled trailer was difficult to see in the middle of the night and unexpected for the traveling public. The litigation was successful for the family and also changed the attitude of the industry in regard to making tractor trailers more visible during nighttime conditions.
Jason spent years litigating environmental cases related to arsenic that was used in chicken feed. The product was known as roxarsone. During the litigation, roxarsone was voluntarily withdrawn from the marketplace and is no longer being fed to chickens. Jason’s closing argument in one of the trials is quoted in New York Times Best Selling author David Kirby’s book Animal Factory. At that time Jason was described as “an earnest and courtly young lawyer from Fayetteville.”
Jason has represented hundreds of injured Arkansans over the past two decades involving a larger variety of product liability cases and work comp cases. He was successful representing a worker who sustained an arm amputation when the manufacturer failed to produce equipment with state of the art light curtains that would have shut off the machine before body parts enter into pinch points. He was also successful representing a man with multiple amputations resulting from a zero turn lawnmower being produced without rollover protection and a seatbelt.
Most recently, Jason’s judgment was affirmed before the Arkansas Supreme Court regarding a complex brain injury case sustained in a work related construction equipment case. The litigation resulted in safer policies regarding the unloading of heavy equipment from trailers on major construction sites and changed Arkansas law in regard to brain injuries.
Jason currently owns a solo practice in Springdale, Arkansas, and litigates in areas of personal injury, product liability, and workers’ compensation.