Draft:Arnold and Itkin

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Arnold & Itkin LLP

Headquarters	Houston, Texas, United States
No. of offices	5
No. of attorneys	30+ (2025)
Date founded	2004
Founders	Kurt Arnold; Jason Itkin
Company type	Limited liability partnership
Website	https://www.arnolditkin.com

Introduction

Arnold & Itkin is a plaintiffs’ law firm with offices in Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge, Midland, and San Antonio. They operate mainly out of Houston. Kurt Arnold and Jason Itkin founded the firm in 2004 and continue to manage it as of June 2025. The firm claims to have secured over $22 billion in recoveries across its entire case history. As a plaintiffs’ firm, Arnold & Itkin have been vocal supporters of legal reform aimed at making certain industrial workplaces safer.

Early years

Kurt Arnold and Jason Itkin met as undergrads at the University of Texas. They became friends in law school and went on to work together at Susman Godfrey, a well-known corporate litigation firm. In 2004, they left Susman Godfrey to found Arnold & Itkin. To get their first case, the firm went around to larger law firms offering to take their ‘worst’ case to “prove what [they] could do.” The pair recovered $1.75 million in their first result. The firm would go on to 50 trial cases in its first five years.

Notable cases and results

In its largest case ever reported, the firm represented a plaintiff against pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson. The plaintiff alleged that the drug Risperdal caused him to develop female breast tissue in a condition called “gynecomastia.” The jury handed down an $8 billion award for the plaintiff, marking the first plaintiff victory in a Risperdal case involving punitive damages. While a judge later reduced the verdict, one legal expert uninvolved in the case said the original verdict would nonetheless lead to larger damages in future cases.

Arnold & Itkin has played a similar role in other litigation. The firm was the first to lead a “bellwether” trial against a chemical manufacturer that accidentally released fatal amounts of acetic acid. Additionally, three of the first seven cases in the Roundup mass tort against Bayer/Monsanto were led by Arnold & Itkin; at $2.25 billion, one of their cases remains the largest Roundup verdict in the current mass tort. In March 2025, the firm won an additional verdict against Bayer/Monsanto that exceeded $2 billion.

In some cases, the firm has used verdicts symbolically. In a crane collapse case against a Dallas property developer, Arnold & Itkin represented the parents of 29-year-old Kiersten Smith, who was killed when a crane struck her apartment building.

Though the jury handed down an $860 million award in total, Jason Itkin requested that the jury award $0 for the plaintiff’s pain and suffering to officially confirm for the public record that Smith did not suffer when she died, and assign $12,006 in punitive damages for Smith’s apartment number.

In other cases, the firm overcame notable legal obstacles on the plaintiff’s behalf. In a lawsuit on behalf of a woman who lost multiple extremities from being hit by a train, the defendant—Union Pacific Railroad—claimed the plaintiff was sitting up on the tracks. Arnold & Itkin argued that the train’s operators made no effort to stop once they saw a person on the tracks, which was unjustified under the circumstances. The jury found for the plaintiff, assigning Union Pacific 80% of the fault and awarding $557 million in damages.

Astroworld litigation

While most of Arnold & Itkin’s casework involves major industrial accidents or dire workplace injuries—e.g. a $411 million verdict for a refinery construction worker in Louisiana struck by a metal bar, or a $141 million verdict for nine paper mill workers who survived an explosion in DeRidder, Lousiana—one of their most well-known recent cases involved Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival.

In 2021, crowd surging at the Astroworld festival led to 10 fatalities and allegedly thousands of injuries. The families of all 10 fatalities filed lawsuits against Travis Scott, Live Nation, and other defendants. As of May 2024, nine of those lawsuits were settled.

Legislative advocacy and maritime litigation

In the past, Arnold & Itkin has used its cases to call for legal reforms, often related to industrial workplaces. They’ve used their public platform to call for strengthening company safety policies. One of their most consistent public call for reform has targeted the Limited Liability Act of 1851—a maritime law that establishes legal limits on lawsuits related to shipwrecks.

The firm’s legislative advocacy is often tied to its litigation efforts. Arnold & Itkin has represented claimants in well-known cases involving the Limited Liability Act: the 2015 sinking of the El Faro and the loss of 33 lives involved the application of the 1851 maritime law. In the litigation following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, a case where Arnold & Itkin represented a third of the crew, defendants attempted to limit all liability to $27 million, which would have allowed them to claim over half a billion dollars in insurance money.

Community involvement

Kurt Arnold and Jason Itkin established the Arnold & Itkin Foundation in 2015 as the charitable arm of the firm. Many of their projects involve children’s advocacy related to foster care or education. For instance, since 2016 the firm (through the foundation) has donated $350,000 to The Monarch School & Institute, a private academic institution for children with learning disabilities. Other frequent philanthropic partners include La Casa De Esperanza, Kids’ Meals Inc., and local schools within Houston ISD.