Crusading lawyer who fought for ‘the little guy,’ including SRS workers, dies at 75

Bob Warren, an attorney who fought a sometimes lonely and expensive battle against the federal government on behalf of workers sickened by radiation at a South Carolina nuclear weapons complex, died this week of kidney failure at his home in the North Carolina mountains.

He was 75.

Warren, who grew up in Allendale, represented hundreds of former Savannah River Site workers and their relatives who sought federal compensation over illnesses the employees contracted at the complex near Aiken. His efforts were part of a career in which he represented some of the Carolinas’ most vulnerable populations, including poor African Americans, aggrieved union workers and down-on-their-luck Indian tribes.

Known for his strong sense of outrage and willingness to challenge the system, Warren made little money in his effort to help the downtrodden. That was particularly true with ailing nuclear workers. The government limited the amount attorneys could earn under a federal program that seeks compensation for sick SRS workers.

As a result, few other lawyers were willing to take on those cases. But Warren said in a 2015 newspaper interview that he felt compelled to help. Many ex-SRS workers were having trouble navigating a bureaucratic maze of regulations that, in some cases, delayed receiving the money they needed for medical bills.

“Listening constantly to desperate situations didn’t give me much choice but to try and help them,” the soft-spoken Warren told The State newspaper.

Even as his own finances dwindled and his health began to fail from Parkinson’s disease, Warren provided legal support for SRS workers.

At one point, he borrowed $100,000 to keep his legal business afloat as he worked on nuclear cases, The State reported in a 2015 profile of Warren. The story was part of McClatchy’s “Irradiated’’ series, a look at how nuclear bomb production affected employees who helped with the nation’s Cold War effort.

North Carolina civil rights attorney Lewis Pitts, a former law partner of Warren’s in South Carolina, said Warren believed in helping those in need while challenging institutions that he thought were stacked against them.

Pitts said SRS workers and the needy “have lost a friend and an advocate in the truest sense.’’

“He was such a gentle man,’’ Pitts said. “Many times, tears would well up in his eyes as he would talk about his clients’ situations, whether it was from all the radiation stuff or somebody whose trailer was being repossessed in Allendale.’’

Pitts said the wiry Warren rarely quit. That was obvious from his collegiate football career, Pitts said. As a 5-9 linebacker at Presbyterian College in the 1960s, Warren was among the team’s leading tacklers his senior year. He also made the state’s North-South All Star team as a high school grid star in Allendale.

Six years ago, A.D. Anderson, a former employee of Warren’s in North Carolina, read comments about Warren into the official record of a federal advisory panel considering whether to award compensation to thousands of sick SRS workers. Anderson said this week that he wanted panel members to know more about Warren, a man he described as “a warrior for justice.’’

“As a young lawyer, he took the rural cases other lawyers wouldn’t touch,’’ Anderson told the federal health panel in 2014. “He never made any money – still doesn’t – but earned a reputation (as) someone who would stand up for the little guy.’”

Warren, who grew up in the segregated South of the 1950s, not far from the Savannah River Site, wasn’t much of a rabble-rouser as a youth. But that changed after he attended Presbyterian College and the University of South Carolina’s law school. In the 1970s and 80s, he challenged some of the state’s most well established practices and storied traditions.

One of his most well-known legal cases was a successful challenge to the practice of county sheriffs picking jury pools for magistrate trials. He also once appeared before the S.C. Supreme Court without wearing a tie to prove a point that he was not part of the establishment.

“My clients don’t wear ties and when I wear one, it sets me apart from them and interferes with my representation of them,’’ Warren said in an American Civil Liberties Union publication. Warren was known in later years for wearing red suspenders to court and government meetings.

Warren told The State in 2015 that he was always uncomfortable with the institutional racism of his youth, but didn’t’ commit to a career path of helping underdogs until a college roommate asked him why black people and white people could not attend the same church in his hometown.

He likened the conversation to a “Damascus Road’’ experience like the apostle Paul had had in the Bible.

Warren, who moved to Black Mountain in 1980 after his early legal career in South Carolina, still was helping with cases just a few months before his death, providing legal advice to a younger lawyer who had taken up the fight on behalf of SRS workers.

That lawyer, Warren Johnson, said Bob Warren was a mentor who laid the groundwork for the cases he still is arguing today.

The cases examine whether the federal government should compensate workers at SRS who can’t get medical records and other records to prove they were sickened during weapons production at the site. The current legal fight involves gaining compensation for those after 1973. Workers before that time have been cleared for compensation.

Johnson said a federal panel could render a decision as soon as next month. Compensation for thousands of workers potentially ride on the decision. Not all who would benefit from a favorable ruling would even know Warren.

“He was a brilliant legal mind, but as a person, I always admired the fact that he was not focused on profitability,’’ Johnson said. “He would start with the right or wrong of a case, and he would fight that case regardless of whether it gained a lot for him at the end or he was going to lose money.’’

Warren is survived by his wife, Julie Dews, two daughters and two step-sons; eight grandchildren; a brother and a sister. A memorial service will be held Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at St. James Episcopal Church in Black Mountain, which is near Asheville.

Dews, who met Warren at a civil disobedience class and married him in 1987, said their last year together was one of the best they ever had. Although his kidneys were failing, Warren remained mobile and in good spirits as friends stopped by to see him, she said.

His last words to her were: “Thank you for taking care of me.’’

This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 7:03 PM.