Cramer & Anderson Partner Barry S. Moller and Associate Graham Moller, his son, have won 2020 Professional Excellence Awards from the Connecticut Law Tribune.
Attorney Barry Moller, whose practice includes complex Personal Injury and Workers’ Compensation cases, won a Distinguished Leaders award, and Attorney Graham Moller, who focuses on Workers’ Compensation and Civil Litigation, won a New Leaders in the Law award.
The Mollers are part of a family with a long and distinguished heritage in the law. Attorney Barry Moller’s wife and Graham Moller’s mother, Gina A. Pasquini, is a leading Connecticut attorney in family and matrimonial law, and has served as Chair of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Family Law section. The late William R. Moller, father and grandfather of the award winners, was one of the best trial lawyers in Connecticut. He authored the first Connecticut Practice Book, commencing in 1966, as well as teaching a bar exam review course which assisted generations of lawyers in passing the exam.
Attorneys Barry and Graham Moller are among the more than 70 attorneys and firms that will be honored at a Connecticut Law Tribune awards celebration in May at the Aqua Turf Club in Plantsville.
The 2020 awards bring the total number of Cramer & Anderson attorneys honored with Professional Excellence Awards in recent years to 10, beginning with a 2016 New Leaders in the Law Award for Immigration Law Partner Lisa Rivas.
In 2017, Partner John Tower won a Distinguished Leaders award, and Partner Josh Weinshank won a New Leaders in the Law Award, as did former associate Abigail Miranda.
Partner Chris Sochacki won a Distinguished Leaders award in 2018, the same year Partner Randy DiBella won a Best Mentors award, and Partner Dan Casagrande won the Giant Slayer award.
Cramer & Anderson Founding Partner, the late Henry B. “Hank” Anderson, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, also in 2018.
Partner Barry S. Moller
Cramer & Anderson’s nomination letter cited Attorney Barry Moller’s ability to win favorable outcomes in complex Workers’ Compensation cases, his leadership role on the Connecticut Bar Association’s Workers’ Compensation Executive Committee, and his dedication to advancing his mediation and settlement skills, even if it means going to great lengths.
In terms of his work on behalf of Workers’ Compensation and Personal Injury clients in 2019, Attorney Moller secured a settlement totaling $398,910.96 for the benefit of a 55-year-old tool-and-die maker who suffered a right knee injury, as well as a settlement totaling $151,500 for a young husband and wife involved in a motor vehicle accident with their two young children in the vehicle.
Other recent results include settling a Workers’ Comp claim for $500,000 on behalf of a 60-year-old client Attorney Moller has represented for 11 years, as well as securing a Compensation Set-Aside Arrangement (WCMSA) involving funds that will pay for work-related injuries for the remainder of the client’s life. In another case, going up against an insurer known for fighting hard to avoid significant settlements, Attorney Moller won a $450,000 mediation settlement.
Attorney Moller’s broad knowledge of the intricacies and complexities of injury cases and his long experience are two reasons he was reappointed in the summer of 2019 to the CBA’s Workers’ Compensation Executive Committee. The 2019-2020 executive committee appointment marks his 22nd consecutive year serving in a role he first undertook in 1997.
The role includes a mandate “to educate all members of the Bar from all sides at all levels of expertise as to workers’ compensation law,” the CBA website explains, as well as working “with all levels of government in an effort to improve the system.” Attorney Moller has written extensively for the Compensation Quarterly, and lectures on Workers’ Compensation issues for not only the CBA but also Sterling Education Services and the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association.
In spring 2019, he traveled to Northern Ireland to participate in a unique mediation course offered through Corrymeela, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. There he joined participants including a woman with a doctorate in anthropology assembling profiles of death row inmates in Texas, and a woman from Holland working to create sports camps in the Sudan as way of dissuading Africa’s youth from risking death to steal people’s cattle or join armed militia groups. Together they engaged in a week of remarkable, intensive training on mediation, led by the global initiative Dialogue for Peaceful Change (DPC) and focusing on developing or improving the toolkit and methodology for managing and preventing conflict.
To learn more about Attorney Barry Moller, see his profile page. He may be contacted by email at bmoller@cramer-anderson.com, or by phone at (860) 355-2631.
Attorney Graham Moller
A 2016 UConn Law graduate who joined Cramer & Anderson in October 2017 as an Associate, Attorney Graham Moller stepped up to take a key role with the Litchfield County Bar Association in 2019.
When LCBA President Regina Wexler reached out to the firm, asking for attorneys available for committee assignments, Attorney Moller raised his hand and went to a meeting to see if he might help. His enthusiasm and polish prompted a request that he establish and lead a new Young Lawyers Committee.
On a professional level, Attorney Moller logged above-and-beyond work on a high-profile case. Shortly before Christmas 2019, the Town of New Milford won a significant, bitterly contested lawsuit involving the demolition and remediation of a blighted industrial property.
After nearly four years of complex litigation involving hundreds of court filings, expert witnesses, 22 days of trial and complicated legal briefs, the Town was awarded a judgment in the amount of $489,372 against a demolition contractor. The Town sued Standard Demolition Services Inc. claiming it breached its $2.7 million contract to demolish and remediate the 315,000-square-foot former brass mill building. Standard countersued, but the court rejected all counts of the counterclaim, finding for the Town on each.
Partner John Tower was lead trial counsel, heading the litigation team that included Attorney Moller. “Graham’s hard work, thorough research, and strategic insights helped us prevail and he was a key part of our team in all aspects of this difficult and lengthy case,” Attorney Tower said in the nomination letter.
To learn more about Attorney Graham Moller, see his profile page. He may be contacted by email at GMoller@cramer-anderson.com, or by phone at (860) 355-2631.
About Cramer & Anderson
Serving clients from six offices in western Connecticut, Cramer & Anderson has a hometown sensibility, a strong regional presence, and a worldly outlook in Practice Areas extending from Estate Planning and Trusts to Municipal Law, Personal Injury, Divorce & Family Law, Land Use Law, Real Estate, Workers’ Comp and much more.
The flagship office is located on the Green in New Milford. Additional offices are located in Danbury, Litchfield, Kent, Washington Depot, and Ridgefield. For more information, see the website at www.crameranderson.com or call the New Milford office at (860) 355-2631.
