A Sense of Urgency: One Lawyer's Journey to Fix Companies and Institutions That Injure and Kill - Hardcover

by Windle Turley (Author)

One Man vs. the System: The Unstoppable Windle Turley

When Windle Turley founded the Turley Law Firm in 1973, he was driven by a single calling: to stand up for victims, or those left to carry on their memory, rendered powerless in the immense shadows of institutions that injure and kill. Driven lifelong by what he names his sense of urgency, Turley's ceaseless determination would one day take him beyond Dallas and all the way to the Supreme Court.

In this memoir of real-life Davids and Goliaths, Windle Turley tells stories of taking on titans from the airlines and firearms industry to the Catholic Church itself. One after another, he lays out a road to legal victories that would not only draw widespread attention to the dangerous failings of public institutions but help to establish protections still servings citizens today.

Interwoven with memories of a hard-scrap Oklahoma childhood and later-life adventures, A Sense of Urgency is by turns lyrical and unflinching, revealing tale by tale how guts must be built well before we fight our greatest battles, and what it means to take risks when all you have is a belief in what is right-and faith that justice must, in the end, prevail for the voiceless.

Author Biography

Windle Turley is a Dallas trial attorney whose precedent-setting cases helped build what would become one of the largest personal injury firms in the country. He is a perennial on Best Lawyers lists such as Super Lawyers, and he has been honored as a Texas Trial Legend by the Dallas Bar Association, the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association, and the Higginbotham American Inn of Court, where he has served as a Master. Turley has also served as an advocate in the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) and has held various leadership offices, including President of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association. He is also a Distinguished Alumnus of Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law as well as Oklahoma City University.

Raised by a single mother in Cheyenne, Oklahoma, Turley worked his way out of his small town to become an early champion for children's and women's rights. Following his undergraduate degree from Oklahoma City University in 1962, he attended Southern Methodist University School of Law before opening the Turley Law Firm in 1973. The Turley Law Firm would become widely known for developing innovated settlement and trial techniques, including the use of video and demonstrative evidence in the courtroom, and was also the first to use settlement documentary video presentations.

Turley opened the floodgates in child sex abuse cases with the first jury verdict against the Catholic Church, a case that raised awareness and inspired action across the country. He also garnered national attention with his "Firearms Project," which sought to impose strict product liability against manufacturers and sellers of unreasonably dangerous firearms. In addition to thousands of individual wrongdoers, Turley's legal battles have been against a wide-ranging set of organizations and institutions from General Motors and the NRA to the United States government.

Windle Turley actively practices law, is a guest lecturer, and operates a working ranch near his old hometown of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, with his wife, Shirley.