News Briefs
Super Lawyers Names Six Wilson Elser Attorneys to 2025 Texas Super Lawyers and Rising Stars
September 18, 2025
Kent Adams is an accomplished trial lawyer. He defends clients in catastrophic personal injury and death cases in the state and federal courts of Texas. Kent has tried to jury verdict 75+ personal injury cases involving negligence, product liability, and premises and professional liability. Kent defends clients in aviation, chemical, energy, environmental, maritime, motor vehicle, occupational disease, oil field, pipeline, premises, refinery, third-party criminal shooter/active shooter inadequate security, child abuse, and transportation-related personal injury cases, as well as electric power generation, transmission, and distribution personal injury cases (hydrocarbon, wind, and nuclear power).
Kent is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. In 2025, for the 17th time, he was named a Texas Super Lawyer in the specialty of Personal Injury Defense. Kent’s personal injury jury defense verdict in Shackleford v. U.S. Silica was named a “Top Ten Defense Verdict in the United States” by the National Law Journal.
Kent is a sixth-generation Texan and a third-generation Houstonian. His family emigrated from England to America in 1641 and from the United States into the Republic of Texas in 1837. Kent’s family has resided in Texas for 189 consecutive years. Kent earned his bachelor’s degree from The George Washington University in Washington, DC, and his Juris Doctor from LSU School of Law in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Kent served as law clerk for the Honorable Joe J. Fisher, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas. Kent started his law firm in Beaumont in 1985, opened his Houston office in 1987, and he and his Houston and Beaumont teams joined Wilson Elser in 2015. Kent served as the Managing Partner of Wilson Elser’s Houston office from 2015–2022.
A past Chairman of the Board of Regents of the Texas State University System, Kent served in the administrations of Texas Governors Bill Clements, George W. Bush, and Rick Perry. Kent also served on the U.S. Senate Judicial Advisory Committee and was instrumental in the vetting process for many sitting federal judges in Texas. Kent’s wife, Sarah Davis, served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 2011–2021.
Areas of Focus
Gulf Coast Energy, Petrochemical & Maritime Industries
Kent's Texas and Louisiana trial practice includes cases involving 18-wheelers; oil & gas drilling rigs, offshore platforms and vessels; hydrocarbon-gathering and transmission lines and process equipment; saltwater removal collection and storage facilities; construction defects; fires and explosions, accidents involving power plants, cranes, refineries, petrochemical plants, underground hydrocarbon and saltwater storage facilities, ships, barges and other vessels; pipeline construction and inspection; storage tanks and process equipment; toxic torts and class actions; plant and building design; and systems, process and software engineering, all with an emphasis on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast energy, petrochemical and maritime industries.
High-Profile Litigation
Kent has defended cases involving power generation, refining, chemical and paper and similar plants throughout Texas and Louisiana, as well as in Alabama, Indiana, Maine and the Dominican Republic. Kent has handled cases involving Minute Maid Stadium, home of the Houston Astros; the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston; the NASA Marshall Spacecraft Center in Huntsville, Alabama; the Texas Brine Underground Facility in Bayou Corne, Louisiana; and countless others. His clients routinely include Fortune 500 companies.
Class Actions
Kent has successfully defended numerous class actions, mass tort and state and federal MDL actions in matters involving products, data breach/cyber security and others. Recently Kent obtained summary judgments in putative class actions in both state and federal courts in Texas involving data breach and cyber security issues. In addition, Kent successfully resolved a pre-litigation potential class action matter involving international parties and allegations of theft of intellectual property. Kent has defended such actions in the state and federal courts of Texas and surrounding states.
Global Practice
Kent has represented insurers, product manufacturers, shippers and other clients from around the world, and his legal practice has included work in Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Korea, the Dominican Republic, Japan and the People’s Republic of China. Kent has defended countless European, South American and Asian companies in a myriad of catastrophic personal injury, environmental and property damage cases. Kent represents U.S., European and Asian insurers in defense, claims handling, coverage and bad faith litigation.
- Louisiana State University, Paul M. Hebert Law Center (J.D., 1981)
- George Washington University (B.A., 1978)
- Texas
- Louisiana
- Supreme Court of the United States
- U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
- U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana
- U.S. District Court, Middle District of Louisiana
- U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas
- U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas
- U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas
- U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas
- DRI: The Voice of the Defense Bar
- Council on Litigation Management
- Texas Association of Defense Counsel
- Fellow, Litigation Counsel of America, 2007–present
- Maritime Law Association of the United States
- Chairman of the Board of Regents, Texas State University System, 2001–2007
- Past member, U.S. Senate Federal Judicial Advisory Committee
- Board member, Texas Board of Health, 1997–1998
- Pilot Commission for the Sabine Bar, Pass and Tributaries, 1988–1990
- Selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America®, 2024-2026
- Selected for inclusion in The Legal 500 United States in Shipping Litigation & Regulation Tier 3, 2023-2025
- Selected for inclusion in Texas Super Lawyers, 2008–2011, 2013-2024
- Selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America©, in the Product Liability area, 2023
- AV® Preeminent™ Rated by Martindale-Hubbell
- Fellow, Texas Bar Foundation