Ted Williams
BA 1969, Political Science and American History
JD 1974, University of Tulsa School of Law
President, Williams Venker & Sanders LLC
Saint Louis, MO
Ted Williams is a trial lawyer who has tried over 200 cases to verdict since graduating from law school in 1974.
He was also commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army from the Purdue ROTC program. He served three years on active duty. From 1972-1977 and from 1991-2007, he served in the Army Reserves. He retired from the Army in 2007 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Earlier this year, he was inducted into the Purdue ROTC Hall of Fame.
Following graduation from law school, and after serving as a Prosecutor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Williams joined the trial section of the Chicago and North Western Railroad Law Department in Chicago.
In 1978, Ted began the private practice of law in St. Louis, Missouri. On May 14, 2001, he and three other lawyers founded the law firm of Williams Venker & Sanders LLC.
The firm started with 10 lawyers, representing clients in Missouri and Illinois. Over the past 10 years, it has grown to 30 full-time lawyers, and 60 contract lawyers, serving clients from Ohio to Colorado and Wisconsin to Oklahoma. The firm currently has offices in St. Louis, MO, Belleville, IL and Edwardsville, IL.
Ted serves as Regional Counsel for two Fortune 500 companies, and is national counsel, for railroad litigation, for a Fortune 100 corporation. He has also represented the Canadian Province of Ontario as Crown Counsel.
He received national recognition as lead trial counsel in the successful defense of Kimberly-Clark Corporation in that company’s first toxic shock syndrome trial (Stanley v. Kimberly-Clark Corporation), for a defense verdict in the first product liability case tried nationwide on the issue of seat restraint devices on underground mining vehicles (Poston v. S & S Corporation, a division of Ingersoll-Rand) and for a defense verdict in the first case tried by the railroad industry regarding the alleged development of carpal tunnel syndrome in locomotive engineers (Pryor v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation).
Ted has been elected as a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a Trial Lawyer Honorary Society, limited to 3500 lawyers nationwide. Over the past 15 years, he has been recognized as one of the “Best Lawyers in America” for personal injury litigation and railroad law. Further, he has also been listed in a number of publications as a “Top Trial Lawyer” and as a “Super Lawyer.”
Ted is admitted to practice law before the United States Supreme Court and in the states of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Washington and the District of Columbia. He is also admitted to practice before the United States Court of Military Appeals.
He has served in leadership positions with various professional organizations, to include the National Association of Railroad Trial Counsel, Defense Research Institute, and the American Bar Association.
Ted has been married for 40 years to Sherri Foust Williams (Purdue, 1970). They have three children, Kelley, (Indiana University, 1998; George Washington University School of Medicine, 2006), a fourth year resident in Pediatric Medicine; Jonathan (DePauw University, 2000), a Detective with the Webster Groves, MO Police Department; and Jordan (Purdue, 2009), a Manager at Urban Outfitters in St. Louis. They also have a grandson, Andrew, age 4 and Kelley is expecting a baby this fall.