An honors graduate of Duke University (magna cum laude) and Duke University School of Law (with honors), Mr. Prater's twenty-year law practice has been devoted to all types of high-stakes civil trial work. Focusing on product liability and pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, Mr. Prater also has extensive experience in business litigation, including consumer fraud, antitrust, and patent cases, and environmental litigation. Mr. Prater's trial work has taken him into some of the most dangerous counties in Alabama, where he has had remarkable success. In the past few years, Mr. Prater has obtained jury verdicts for defendant product manufacturers in multi-million dollar cases in all parts of the state, including the first verdict rendered in favor of a defendant product manufacturer in Lowndes County in over a decade. He also was trial counsel in an environmental contamination case filed by thousands of plaintiffs that tried for over nineteen months - - the largest and longest-running trial in Alabama history.
Mr. Prater is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, as well as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Mr. Prater has served as national counsel for various product manufacturers, and he is one of thirteen Alabama lawyers selected as members of the Product Liability Advisory Council. Mr. Prater also is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America for his personal injury and environmental litigation work , and he is included among the Top 50 lawyers in Alabama Super Lawyers magazine.
Mr. Prater is very involved in bar activities, as he serves on the Executive Committee of the Birmingham Bar Association and has chaired a Grievance Committee of the Birmingham Bar Association. At the state level, he has chaired an Alabama State Bar task force which recommended revisions to the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct and the Alabama Rules of Disciplinary Procedure. Those revised rules were recently adopted by the Alabama Supreme Court.
Married for twenty years and the father of two teenage girls, Mr. Prater serves on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Birmingham YMCA, and he also serves on the Board of Trustees of both Canterbury United Methodist Church and the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.
