2023 Up & Coming Attorneys: Tony J. Stauber

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Gustafson Gluek PLLC  

In his relatively short career since graduating magna cum laud from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in 2019, Tony Stauber has found an important niche specializing in representing plaintiffs who have been wronged and have limited options for redress.

The original impetus for that direction came during his time at Mitchell Hamline, when he assisted one of his mentors, Professor Eric Janus (the school’s former president and dean), doing research for amicus briefs in a case protecting the rights of individuals impermissibly and indefinitely held in prisons instead of proper mental health treatment centers.

The class action suit against the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, Karsjens v. Harpstead, was his first experience “working on behalf of underrepresented people who have an uphill battle,” Stauber said.

As an attorney at Gustafson Gluek, Stauber has taken on a number of other, high-profile cases representing plaintiffs who could be considered underdogs seeking redress from powerful organizations. Those include the Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation in North Dakota and Illinois and the 3M Combat Arms Earplug Litigation in Minnesota state court, as well as a major consumer class action filed against the Siemens Corp. for allegedly selling defective circuit breakers.

He said that, in cases he’s handled, each of the plaintiff groups has been victimized in some way and “usually don’t have a way to be made whole.”

Some of Stauber’s favorite recent work has been a pro bono case regarding the constitutional rights of those wrongly confined in prisons rather than receiving transfers to mental health facilities within 48 hours, as the law stipulates.

Stauber says he’ll continue monitoring news and current events “to see if there is some group of people — consumers, employers, whoever might be victimized by illegal conduct, and do whatever I can to help make them whole.”