Not press hits — the size of the final award and the number of victims it reached. I report what happened publicly. I don't take credit for the number.
What was publicly reported: an AP wire on the matter broke the same day, picked up by The Washington Post, NPR and NBC News, on a day the news cycle was supposed to belong to U.S.-Russia tensions, four days after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 went down — while $50 million was still the number being floated. The final settlement, for nearly 9,000 women, was $190 million.
AP · The Washington Post · NPR · NBC News
When the defendant is a bank, not a bomber, the survivors still get lost in the story. We work directly with survivors and families, always with consent, on their timeline, so when the case does make news, it's their story that lands.
A client brought me a case. Before the retainer was signed, a search of public records and advertising data surfaced conduct that was happening in the open, online, and that nobody had looked for — from public sources, in an afternoon.
Local coverage in the first 24 hours set the frame for the rest of the case. Filing-day positioning kept the story on the family's terms through settlement.
Case outcomes depend on the specific facts of each matter; past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in future cases.
“Karen has the ability to get press no one else seems to get. She understands false narratives and knows how to tell the real story. Her media connections are unmatched.”
Four matters, told the way I'm allowed to tell them — what changed the story, and what changed because of it.
None of these are named without consent, for reasons explained below — but none of them are unverifiable, either. If you want the specifics behind any matter here, I'll walk you through it on a call, under NDA, before you've paid me anything.
The organization's communications office issued a new minimizing statement nearly every time a filing hit the docket. We built relationships with the reporters covering the story over several months, briefing survivors' counsel ahead of each filing so the record was accurate before the organization's statement could reset it.
Coverage held on survivor accountability through the related proceedings, rather than resetting to the organization's framing after every new filing.
Across a portfolio of transportation, toxic-exposure, and industrial-accident matters, the standard defense was silence — no comment, no statement, wait it out. We kept the same reporters engaged at each filing and ruling, so the absence of a response became part of the story instead of the end of it.
Sustained press attention across the portfolio meant the defendants' silence read as evasion, not resolution, keeping pressure on through settlement.
The company's first move was to frame the allegations as an isolated incident at a single facility. We worked with international counsel to coordinate statements across time zones, so the reporting held the pattern-of-practice framing intact rather than fragmenting into a series of unconnected local stories.
The pattern-of-practice framing held through resolution, instead of the story splintering into isolated incidents the way the company's initial statement invited.
The company's first statement described a “technical intrusion.” We got ahead of a second corporate statement with the consumer-harm specifics — fraud losses, card-reissuance costs, the number of exposed accounts — before the company could reset the story around its own remediation efforts.
Consumer-harm framing held through resolution; the company's remediation narrative never became the story the coverage was built on.
These matters describe communications strategy alongside litigation outcomes; case results depend on the specific facts of each matter, are attributable to counsel of record, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in future cases.
A fixed cadence does it: one master press release and coordinated social messaging every month, so no firm has to guess what the others are saying to press and none gets blindsided by a story it didn't see coming. Every firm signs off on the same language before it goes out. Removing that guesswork is what prevents the fragmentation and infighting defense firms rely on to fracture a coalition — not asking a hundred lawyers to get along.
I don't “dole out” media through a distribution list — I pick up the phone. Twenty-five years in this world, and a career that started in a newsroom, means the reporters I call are people I know, not names in a database. I place a story with the outlet and the reporter who will handle it — and the survivor telling it — with the seriousness it deserves, timed to the moment it matters most in discovery or settlement.
That timing serves the case, but the relationship comes first: before any story runs, I make sure the client and the survivors behind it understand exactly what's coming, why, and what it means for them. Nobody I represent finds out they're in the news by reading it themselves.
I answer my own phone — for the firm that retains me. Nobody can personally field 9,000 individual calls, and I won't pretend otherwise. What I build instead is a system: every survivor treated the way I'd want someone in my own family treated, informed and respected, even though I'm not the one personally on the phone with each of them. Litigation like this takes years, and defense firms count on that — they bank on exhaustion, on people feeling forgotten, on trauma wearing people down until they walk away. A system built to outlast that timeline is how it doesn't work.
Trauma is real, and it doesn't run on a legal timeline. My job is to make sure this process, however long it takes, is a kind one — not another institution that treats them as a file number. Every first Wednesday, the system holds a structured briefing: plain-language updates, real answers, and space for whatever they need to say. Survivors aren't case management metrics to me — they're the reason this work exists.
For the defense firms on the other side of that? I don't go easy. That's where the fight belongs — never on the people who already survived one.
No. The system runs the same on a single verdict as it does on 9,000 claimants — it just moves faster. On an individual catastrophic-injury trial, the discipline is in what doesn't get said: nothing runs publicly during an active trial that could taint the jury pool or hand the defense grounds to challenge the venue. Every word is coordinated with trial counsel on timing, not improvised around it.
Then verdict day arrives, and there's no scramble. The story is built and ready to go out the moment the jury speaks, so the case is defined by what actually happened in that courtroom — not by whatever the defense's press office gets out first.
How a communications firm talks about its past clients is the best available evidence of how it will talk about you. Read this page as that. My rule is written down so you can hold me to it.
I don't name a client, a defendant, or a matter without counsel's written consent. Where a matter is named here, I have that consent. The others aren't named because I don't, and I'm not going to ask for it to decorate a website.
I don't publish settlement figures that aren't already public. Where a number is on the record I'll use it. Where it isn't, it stays out — including numbers that would flatter me.
I don't enter work for awards. Doing it would mean putting client matters in front of a judging panel, and confidence is worth more than a plaque.
Full case detail is shared under privilege, once retained. If you want the specifics behind any matter above — which outlets, which reporters, what moved and when — I'll walk you through it on a call, under NDA, before you've paid me anything.
You should have the same visibility. Provide your case name and the defendant. I don't use onboarding forms — no one fills them out. To expose their strategy, their communications team, and their playbook within 12 hours, call or text directly.
Call / Text Karen — 202.322.8199