Mark R. Mueller

Mark is now co-lead on Coloplast MDL with Robert Salim and Riley Burnett. He is also on the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee for Boston Scientific, Massachusetts State Court Consolidation and for the Minnesota State Court AMS Consolidation.

Mark grew up in rural Wisconsin, attended Colorado College for a year, and graduated with a B.S. in psychology and minor in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tired of cold weather in the Midwest, he moved to Texas for law school at the University of Houston Law Center (J.D. 1981). Mark has taken and passed four state bar exams (Wisconsin, Texas, Montana and Louisiana) and been admitted by reciprocity in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Oklahoma.

He began his private law practice in Orange and Houston, Texas with his good friend and law school mock trial teammate, Dennis Powell, who is now a state district judge in Orange. Their practice consisted mainly of criminal defense and general personal injury cases. After leaving the partnership, Mark began to concentrate on personal injury matters, specifically medical malpractice cases. He eventually developed a national reputation for obtaining high settlement values and winning verdicts in complex and difficult birth injury cases in a wide variety of venues throughout Texas and other states.

His work and cases contributed to groundbreaking medical publications and presentations on uterine hyperstimulation, the effects of mechanical forces on brain blood flow dynamics, the nature and frequency of vacuum extractor brain injuries, and the use of demonstrative evidence combining photos, MRI’s and graphics to show the mechanism of injury in a birth injury case. In addition to his substantial and often precedent setting birth injury work, Mark has handled a wide variety of cases including those involving chemical and radiation exposures, business fraud, insurance bad faith, electrocutions due to faulty products, deaths and injuries from unsafe industrial and household products, deceptive trade practices, Native American land rights, premises liability for rapes and assaults from poor security or defective locks, doors, or windows and sexual misconduct against religious orders, therapists and counselors.

He has handled unusual cases such as the so-called condom rape case where his efforts led to reform of the grand jury system by using professional counselors to educate grand jurors about rape trauma and rape responses. This led to the successful prosecution of his client’s rapist and ultimately to a civil suit recovery against the landlord for failure to have properly working sliding glass door latches.

Mark has been involved in a wide variety of environmental and progressive groups and causes. He has served as a rape crisis volunteer counselor and volunteer legal counsel for a number of public interest and non- profit organizations. He also attended and has taught for several years at the nation’s finest program for trial lawyers, the Trial Lawyers College – founded by the nation’s best trial lawyer, Gerry Spence of Wyoming.

In 2009, Mark accepted a pro bono case involving a mother’s unprecedented effort to retrieve sperm from her murdered son for future use with a surrogate mother. In that case Mueller orchestrated a successful court hearing in less than three hours which led to the mother’s recovery of her son’s sperm. These cases and others have led to appearances on Oprah Winfrey, Good Morning America, the Today Show, Montel Williams and others as well as national front page news coverage by the NY Times and other outlets including legal and general interest magazines.

Mark is known for his unconventional style and impromptu sense of humor as well as for his optimism, focus, and imaginative approach to problems and solutions. In addition to his legal activities, he has founded and runs Voodoo Cowboy, an entertainment company in Austin, which served as executive producer of “Downloading Nancy” (Sundance 2008) and as producer of “The 2 Bobs” (SXSW 2009).

He has twin sons, 22 year old guitar wizards (Max and Andy) who are writing, recording, performing and preparing to tour the West Coast with their music. In addition to his sons, Mark’s immediate family consists of Reece (a Catahoula/Pit Bull mix rescue dog), Lucky and Cleopatra. (Catahoula brother and sister puppies.)

Mark’s interests include philosophy, shamanism, magic, humor, adventure travel, conscious media, personal and global transformation, hot yoga, art, music, design, fashion and working and playing with a diverse and multicultural/multiracial group of friends and associates. He also throws the best party of the year in August in Austin.