Five Lightfoot Lawyers Named to 2027 Lawdragon Leading Litigators in America
September 14, 2026
Lawdragon has named Lightfoot, Franklin & White LLC partners Samuel H. Franklin, Lee M. Hollis, M. Christian King, Jared I. Levinthal and Harlan I. Prater to the 2027 edition of its Leading Litigators in America guide.
Now in its fifth year, the guide recognizes trial lawyers with decades of experience representing clients in state or federal courts, before government agencies and in investigations. Honorees are selected through Lawdragon’s journalistic research, submissions and vetting by leading litigators across the country.
Franklin is one of the firm's co-founders and has spent nearly 50 years trying jury cases in areas ranging from personal injury and wrongful death to complex business disputes. He is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers and served as its 68th president from 2017 to 2018. Franklin is a former president of the Alabama Defense Lawyers Association (ADLA) and has played an active role in the Alabama State Bar throughout his career.
Hollis is the lawyer clients call when a case isn't going as planned with current counsel or when the stakes suddenly rise. He's built a reputation for stepping in, often on the eve of trial, to assess a case, pinpoint its core problems and craft a creative path forward. For more than 30 years, he has tried product liability, personal injury and commercial cases to verdict in jurisdictions around the country. His practice centers on medical device and product liability matters as well as catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases with exposure in the seven- to nine-figure range.
King, one of Lightfoot's founding partners, is the lawyer leading companies call when they're facing bet-the-company litigation. His practice centers on high-stakes derivative and class action claims for Fortune 100 companies in the financial services, manufacturing and energy sectors, and he has tried many of these cases to verdict for both plaintiffs and defendants across the Southeast. He also maintains an active appellate practice, with particular experience in the constitutional limits on punitive damages awards, and has argued before the Alabama Supreme Court and several federal appellate courts.
Levinthal is board-certified in civil trial law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a distinction held by fewer than 700 lawyers statewide. For nearly 30 years, he has represented plaintiffs and defendants in commercial and business disputes, product liability, professional malpractice, intellectual property, insurance coverage and bad faith, wrongful death and catastrophic personal injury matters. He also serves as Lightfoot's Houston managing partner.
Prater is one of a select few Fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the American Board of Trial Advocates. Clients have relied on his experience in product liability, pharmaceutical, medical device, environmental and business litigation for more than 30 years. He served as defense counsel in the largest and longest-running trial in Alabama history, an environmental contamination case involving thousands of plaintiffs that lasted more than 19 months.
