Kristina Scurry was born to Pamela M. Scurry and Richardson G. Scurry Jr.; her father worked for an investment firm in Purchase, New York, and co-founded the Bible Literacy Project. She graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School. At Yale, she authored a law review comment that examined the effect of mandatory minimum sentencing of sex crimes in South African criminal law.[2] She argued that the existing structure favored judicial consideration of mitigating factors and should be replaced with a framework centered on aggravators.[3] In 2007, she married fellow Princeton alumnus Evan Baehr.[4]
Baehr believes that she and her children were being harmed by indoor "toxic mold", which is considered a myth by experts.[7][8] The Baehrs said they spent $700,000 on home mold remediation.[9][6]
In 2021, the Baehrs, represented by counsel, sued 11 builders and contractors involved in their home's construction. All but one defendant settled prior to trial. In August 2023, a Travis County jury proportionally awarded $3.1 million to the Baehrs from the remaining defendant, an HVAC contractor.[6]
After finding that few Texas attorneys specialized in environmental toxic torts, Baehr in 2021 founded a boutique law firm called Just Well Law to focus on this area of practice.[6]
After CNBC featured her in a 2021 segment, Baehr said that she received many calls, including from Hawaii, where military families at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam claimed serious harms from tap water contaminated by a jet fuel leak.[6] In 2022, Just Well Law and local counsel filed suit in federal court on behalf of military families and civilians who claimed harm from the leak.[10] The number of claimants grew over the next year,[11] reaching 7,500 represented by Just Well Law in three separate cases. The suits were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act.[12]
Some of the plaintiffs against the Navy in the Red Hill litigation are active-duty service members.[13] Although the Feres doctrine bars most tort claims by active-duty personnel, Baehr has argued that it cannot be used to bar claims by service members for injuries they suffered off duty in their own homes.[14]
Abellwether trial for a limited number of plaintiffs began on April 29, 2024.[1] Media outlets have described Baehr as "lead counsel" for the plaintiffs.[15][16] The U.S. government admitted to liability for negligence at the fuel storage facility and that residents using the water line suffered injury.[1] Baehr described the government's stipulation to liability as "historic".[11] The trial is set to determine the extent of harm experienced by plaintiffs and whether the government failed to warn residents of the military base.[1]
^Chang, Christopher; Gershwin, M. Eric (December 2019). "The Myth of Mycotoxins and Mold Injury". Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology. 57 (3): 449–455. doi:10.1007/s12016-019-08767-4. PMID31608429.
