Diamond Deleon Attorney Corpus Christi – 1 of 5 After a quarter century in Corpus Christi, personal injury attorney Thomas J. Henry has moved to San Antonio with his family.Billy Calzada / San Antonio Express-News Show more Show less
2of 5 Corpus Christi attorney Thomas J. Henry places a poster of Bexar County District Attorney candidate Nico LaHood on a table during a press conference Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014, where he announced a $694,000 donation to LaHood’s campaign. Express-News for San Antonio Show more Show less
Diamond Deleon Attorney Corpus Christi
3of 5 Corpus Christi attorney Thomas J. Henry talks about his $694,000 donation to the campaign of Nicholas LaHood for Bexar County District Attorney during a press conference Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014. Show more Show less
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4of 5 Corpus Christi attorney Thomas J. Henry places a poster of Bexar County District Attorney candidate Nico LaHood on a table during a press conference Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014, where he announced a $694,000 donation to LaHood’s campaign. Express-News for San Antonio Show more Show less
5of 5Corpus Christi attorney Thomas J. Henry speaks about a $694,000 donation to the campaign of Bexar County District Attorney Nicholas LaHood during a news conference Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014. San Antonio Express-For News Show More Show Less
SAN ANTONIO – In 2007, justice moved very slowly when Corpus Christi personal injury attorney Thomas Jude Henry discovered that a man who ran a law firm in that city was not actually licensed to practice. .
Dissatisfied with the government’s response to his complaints, he decided to help the process and pay for television ads in which he referred to Mauricio Celisi as a plaintiff, not a lawyer, who had been defrauding clients for years.
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“If you hired this law firm, you may be entitled to a refund of all attorney fees you paid. Contact me immediately,” the ad said.
Now 52, Henry has moved to a new high-profile town — this time in San Antonio, where he opened an office in 2012 and recently moved with his wife and two teenage children after more than 25 years in Corpus Christi.
The announcement of his move came shortly after Henry gave nearly $694,000 to the campaign of Nicholas LaHood, who is running for district attorney against longtime Republican incumbent Susan Reed.
That amount of funding from a single donor is unprecedented in a Bexar County race and has led many to question Henry’s intentions.
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Henry said the “appalling” rate of child abuse in Bexar County and the ineffective prosecution of offenders led to his involvement.
However, detractors do not think his intentions were altruistic, and Reed was strongly opposed to both Henry’s support of LaHood and LaHood’s willingness to accept money.
Last week, Henry announced another major donation, a $350,000 grant he will give to ChildSafe, a local nonprofit organization that will use the funds to train teachers and health care workers to detect and prevent child abuse.
Philanthropy is nothing new for Henry, who over the years has fed hundreds of thousands of Thanksgiving meals to Corpus residents, raised funds for an animal shelter and donated $500,000 to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which won the naming rights to the Thomas J. Henry Tennis Center.
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Before Henry entered the race for district attorney, San Antonians knew him from a series of great Super Bowl commercials from Learjet to Rolls Royce, as he described the huge settlements he won for his clients. . .
Both photos would have been hard for him to imagine growing up on a farm in Kansas, one of six children of parents who never went to college.
The family grew wheat, alfalfa and millet, and raised dairy cows and hogs, cattle and German shepherds on the property, 30 miles west of Fort Riley, where his father was last stationed during his 20-year Army career.
The daily tasks were many, but Henry and his brother Mike, the CEO of his law firm, still found time to have fun.
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“In the days of wooden racquets, Mike and I would run a few miles to the city park,” Henry said of his early interest in tennis. “So even though I was a wrestler in high school, I was always close to him.”
Henry came to Texas in high school when his father took a job in a machine shop in Corpus Christi. Soon, while Henry was still in high school, another job offer resulted in the family uprooting to Tehran, Iran, in the midst of a revolution in the country.
“We left in 1979 just before the embassy was taken over. “I learned a lot about the world. I even remember going to school on the bus and seeing people who were members of the revolutionary movement being killed on the side of the road. … It was a wonderful eye-opener.”
After graduating from high school in Corpus Christi, Henry attended the University of Texas at El Paso to study criminal justice. He held down two jobs while in school; one said that he works part-time, delivering newspapers.
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After completing his studies, Henry entered St. Louis University School of Law. Mary in San Antonio, where she graduated in 1988.
While studying law in El Paso, he said, he decided to pursue law.
“At that moment I thought, ‘I want to do this.’ I think I can do what I study,'” he recalls. “I thought that somehow I would like to be a person who can help people and stand up for people.”
Yale Law School graduate Vincent Johnson, a professor who joined St. Mary’s in 1982 and teaches courses in tort law, legal ethics, remedies and torts, said he remembers Henry down to where he sat in class.
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“When it comes to the area I’m in now, it’s really edifying to see how easily the economically disadvantaged — if they’re injured, oppressed, or killed — are marginalized or bullied by corporate America,” he said. “I do what I do today because it’s a natural fit for me.”
Henry met his wife, Azteca, who holds a degree in accounting from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, at a gym in the early 1990s. Going on a date took some convincing.
“He was playing a little too hard to get, he made me try harder,” he said. “But I persevered. It was the best thing I have ever met in my life.”
In 2002, Henry was ordered by a judge to pay $50,000 in fines after filing a medical malpractice lawsuit against two Corpus Christi doctors who allegedly gave the patient the drug that caused his death. The court said there was insufficient “evidential support” for the claim and that the drug was never delivered.
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That same year, there was a cross between Driscoll Children’s Hospital and Henry when he placed a plaque in his office across from the hospital.
“Loving parents always protect their children, and justice demands that children be protected,” said an editorial in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times detailing the split.
The sign lists the types of cases it handles, including birth defects and medical malpractice, along with contact information.
“What he’s done has always been better than people would like to think,” he said of his legal skills. “Some have a bad opinion of him, some don’t.”
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Those who have a bad opinion about him, whether they are doctors or lawyers, the people who reached this report refused to talk to the protocol.
Bob Hilliard is a Corpus Christi personal injury attorney who has partnered with Henry on several cases, including the General Motors Co. ignition switch recall litigation.
“It’s light, unobtrusive and really detailed,” he said. “He’s a great pilot at what he does, but it’s a testament to his discipline that he can also be a co-pilot. … You won’t be able to see all of Tom Henry in commercials.”
San Antonio civil attorney Mikal Watts, a Democrat known for his political spending, said he has known Henry for 25 years. They came out about the same time as young lawyers in Corpus Christi.
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“Tom was never aggressively involved in politics,” he said. “I believed then, and I still believe, that his intentions were true, and I don’t believe that he came to San Antonio and suddenly decided that Nico LaHood needed help without seriously worrying about where we were with Susan Reed. “I think Tom believes that Susan Reed had her best days twenty years ago.”
Henry annually raises funds to benefit the Corpus Christi animal shelter, donates laptops to students in need, and sponsors the Tony Parker basketball skills clinic for youth, among other efforts.
“The man donated hundreds of thousands of turkeys when no one was looking, and I think that speaks to his character more than anything.
