Mona LIsa Wallace

After achieving powerful results for tens of thousands of clients in the asbestos
and occupational diseases areas and establishing Wallace & Graham as a top-tier
plaintiffs’ firm, in the early 2000s, Ms. Wallace grew the law firm into other practice
areas. She brought successful class actions for employees and retirees who claimed
their medical and retirement benefits were being unfairly reduced. Wallace and Graham
was able to recover hundreds of millions of dollars for workers and retirees in class
actions addressing their pension and medical benefits. She also took on predatory
lenders, the results of which brought significant refunds to tens of thousands of low-
income borrowers afflicted with “pay day loans.” When the cases started, the state was
full of brick-and-mortar payday lending stores that trapped working people inside a cycle
of debt. But after the cases were brought, the stores left the state.
Ms. Wallace also brought class actions against car dealers for alleged unfair and
deceptive sales practices, obtaining significant settlements. She co-counseled with the
Department of Justice on claims of alleged improper medical billing practices under the
False Claims Act. Further her firm began to take on corporations that abuse the
environment. Mona Lisa and her team successfully sued many corporate wrongdoers
involving such toxins as coal ash, asbestos, chemicals, and most recently, hog waste. In
that regard, from 2013 to 2020, Ms. Wallace and her team represented eastern N.C.
families in one of the largest environmental claims in history with “private nuisance”
lawsuits brought against the hog production component of behemoth multinational
Smithfield Foods. Ms. Wallace represented 500 neighbors against Chinese-owned
Smithfield, alleging the antiquated “lagoon and spray” methods of waste disposal was
interfering with clients’ use and enjoyment of their homes. In back-to-back trials
extending through 2018 and 2019, five different juries unanimously sided with the
plaintiffs, awarding damages exceeding $500 million. The surprise twists and turns of
the litigation, and the seemingly insurmountable odds, was described by author Corban
Addison in his book, Wastelands, published on June 7, 2022.
Ms. Wallace’s most recent legal efforts have included a focus on representing
military families in cases alleging “slumlord” conditions brought against large, privatized
landlord companies who operate military housing. She has obtained successful
resolutions of such cases involving Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg, and Fort Belvoir service

members and their families. In addition, she is representing many Camp Lejeune
service members and their families in cancer and latent disease claims against the U.S.
Government under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. She was proud to have been
appointed as co-lead counsel by the Eastern District of North Carolina in the ongoing
Camp Lejeune Justice Act Litigation.
The awards and recognition that Ms. Wallace has achieved for her legal work are
voluminous. She ahs been named the Public Justice American Trial Lawyer of the Year
on two different occasions and was a runner-up on another (2019, 2020). She is the first
woman to receive the Tommy Maline Eagle Award bestowed by the Southern Trial
Lawyers (2020). She has consistently been acknowledged as one of the top 100 trial
lawyers and among the Leaders in the law for N.C. She received the Achieve Award
from Public Justice for her work in Consumer Litigation. She won North Carolina
Advocates for Justice’s Ebbie Award and the North Carlina Gertrude S. Carraway
Award of Merit. She received the North Carolina Justice Center’s Defenders of Justice
Award. Recently she was honored to be selected for the N.C. 2010 Power List of
Personal Injury Attorneys, and N.C. Leaders in the Law.
Outside of her impassioned legal work, Mona Lisa is a philanthropist in her local
community, legal community, and her state. Her true pride is her family, husband, Lee,
daughters Whitney (a law firm partner), and Lane, and five (5) beautiful grandchildren.