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Law360 (June 23, 2020, 1:33 PM EDT) -- Susman Godfrey LLP founder Stephen Susman has been diagnosed with the coronavirus while recovering from serious head injuries sustained in a bike crash, his wife said Tuesday in a social media post.
The famed trial lawyer, 79, has been at TIRR Memorial Hermann rehabilitation hospital, and was able to respond to words and speak. He has been hospitalized since his April 22 bike crash and had a recent surgery at another facility. His friends, colleagues and relatives have had limited access to him during the pandemic; it is unclear how or at which facility he contracted the virus, Ellen Susman said.
Stephen Susman started his elite litigation boutique in 1980 after winning a record-shattering, $500 million antitrust settlement while at a small personal injury and maritime law firm. He more recently founded the Civil Jury Project at New York University, which studies the decline of the civil jury trial and holds educational programs and forums for state and federal judges.
Susman has long been an avid bicyclist. Over the past decade, he has participated several times in a two-day, 150-mile charity bike ride between Houston and Austin, Texas, to fight multiple sclerosis, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, according to Susman Godfrey.
He also led bike rides through Houston that spanned dozens of miles, sometimes multiple times a week. He was on one such ride with Susman Godfrey colleagues on April 22 when his front wheel hit a snag in the pavement in Houston's Old Braeswood neighborhood, sending him over the handlebars.
The law firm declined to comment.
--Editing by Pamela Wilkinson and Marygrace Murphy.
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