Lindsey Boney is a member of the firm’s Litigation and Appellate practice groups but has a truly varied practice that is national in scope and spans the substantive spectrum. He has long represented Fortune 50 and multinational companies in federal and state trial and appellate courts around the country and in complex multidistrict litigation. And in non-litigation matters, he advises companies and organizations from all walks of life — from an international nonprofit to a Birmingham-based company listed in the Inc. 5000, just to name a few.
Lindsey is nationally ranked in Chambers USA, in which he is described as “an emerging superstar.” He currently serves as national lead legal strategy and briefing counsel for several consumer-products companies facing mass litigation. He also regularly represents pharmaceutical companies in multidistrict litigation (MDL) and other consolidated or coordinated mass litigation. As a member of numerous virtual law firm national teams, Lindsey has been lead appellate counsel at trial, led the briefing and legal strategy in trial and appellate courts, and prepared and defended key regulatory witnesses at deposition.
He regularly handles federal- and state-court appeals for corporate clients across industries. He has had significant appellate wins for global pharmaceutical companies, in particular in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Ninth, and Eleventh circuits, the Iowa Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal, and the Missouri Court of Appeals. He also has been the appellate-lawyer-at-trial for a number of significant wins in federal product-liability MDLs and in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, including a JNOV win that wiped out a $27.8 million plaintiffs’ verdict.
Lindsey also has had the honor and privilege to represent clients pro bono in significant, high-stakes cases:
- Most significantly, he led the team that secured the exoneration of Clemente Aguirre, an innocent man who spent 14 years in prison — 10 of them on Florida’s death row — after being wrongfully incarcerated and convicted for the 2004 double-stabbing murders of his next-door neighbors. Mr. Aguirre’s initial trial counsel never investigated his claim of innocence, never hired forensic experts, and never tested for DNA the 150+ items that police collected from the crime scene. After a Florida trial court denied Mr. Aguirre’s motion for a new trial based on new evidence that powerfully showed his innocence (and someone else’s guilt), the New York-based Innocence Project asked Bradley to handle his appeal. In April 2016, Lindsey argued the appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, which later unanimously reversed, vacated Mr. Aguirre’s convictions and death sentence, and ordered a new trial. At Mr. Aguirre’s request, Bradley stayed on as trial counsel. Lindsey co-led Mr. Aguirre’s retrial team, which included lawyers from other New York and Florida law firms, before the state ultimately dropped the charges in November 2018—after three weeks of jury selection and in-court depositions related to the new evidence. Aguirre is the 164th wrongfully convicted death-row inmate to be exonerated in the United States since 1973 and the 28th Florida death-row exoneree. You can read more about the case in this case study.
- Lindsey represented the Innocence Project as amicus curiae in the Arkansas Supreme Court, which overturned the denial of DNA testing of crime scene evidence in the “West Memphis Three” case. The West Memphis Three — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley — were originally convicted of the 1993 murders of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Their convictions were overturned on appeal after DNA testing excluded the three then-teenagers from the crime-scene evidence that was tested. They entered Alford pleas in 2011 to avoid retrial and secure their release. Echols later sought additional DNA testing with a newer, more precise method in an effort to fully exonerate the three men and identify the true killers. Although an Arkansas circuit court denied his petition on the grounds that Echols is no longer in custody, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed in April 2024, agreeing with Echols’s and the Innocence Project’s arguments that the plain text of the Arkansas statute allowing for post-conviction DNA testing does not require that an individual be incarcerated to pursue relief. You can read about the decision here.
- Lindsey represents the Innocence Project as amicus curiae in support of a new trial for Toforest Johnson, an Alabama death-row inmate for whom there is widespread concern that he is innocent of the 1995 murder for which he was convicted. Major news outlets, including the Washington Post, have extensively covered the case and Bradley’s amicus brief on behalf of the Innocence Project.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit appointed Lindsey as counsel for a federal inmate who appealed an adverse summary judgment on his Eighth Amendment civil claim against prison officials. In March 2014, following oral argument, the Eleventh Circuit unanimously reversed in a published opinion. Lindsey stayed on as lead counsel in the federal district court, and the case settled favorably before trial.
- Lindsey has successfully defended protesters’ free speech rights in Alabama state court.
Lindsey served as a law clerk to the Hon. William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (2009-2010). Before law school, Lindsey worked in full-time Christian ministry and lived in China for several years.
