Chris J. Panatier

The $14 Million Seay Judgment

Dennis Seay worked for Daniel Construction Company at a South Carolina polyester plant from 1971 through 1980, repairing equipment sealed and insulated with asbestos. Chris Panatier tried his family's case with Kevin Paul and South Carolina counsel.

The nine-day trial put in evidence that Seay opened and repaired asbestos-insulated equipment, that Celanese had received information associating mesothelioma with even slight exposure, and that the industrial literature of the era already recommended warnings, respiratory protection and dust controls.

The jury awarded $2 million on the survival claim, $5 million for wrongful death, $5 million for loss of consortium, and $2 million in punitive damages — $14 million, on findings of willful, wanton and reckless conduct.

Celanese's best argument on appeal was not about asbestos at all. The company had outsourced all plant maintenance to Daniel Construction, required Daniel to insure those workers, and reimbursed the premiums — so, it argued, Seay was its "statutory employee," and workers' compensation was his family's only remedy. The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in 2019, and on August 11, 2021 the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed again: a legitimate outsourcing decision does not convert the contractor's workers into the owner's employees, and it does not buy the owner tort immunity. The ruling preserved the family's judgment and clarified the state's statutory-employee doctrine in the same stroke.

The Winkel and Anderson Talc Verdicts

Panatier, David Greenstone and Kyle Tracy represented Judith Winkel in Los Angeles in a case about Cashmere Bouquet body powder. The proof traced the product from its historical talc sources through composition, testing and use, to inhalation and medical causation.

After a two-week trial and approximately two hours of deliberation, the jury found Colgate liable on negligence, design defect, manufacturing defect, failure to warn and breach of warranty, assigned the company ninety-five percent of the responsibility, and returned approximately $13 million in compensatory damages. It also found malice — opening a punitive phase, although the published figure remained the compensatory award.

Panatier and Greenstone also represented Joanne Anderson, whose history included an estimated ten thousand applications of Johnson's Baby Powder. In May 2018 a Los Angeles jury awarded $21.75 million in compensatory damages and $4 million punitive — $25.75 million, with sixty-seven percent of the compensatory responsibility assigned to Johnson & Johnson.

The Rogers Gross-Negligence Findings

Carl Rogers worked for thirty years at Goodyear's Tyler, Texas tire plant, in a room with eighty-five tire-building machines.

Because Goodyear subscribed to Texas workers' compensation, benefits were ordinarily the family's exclusive remedy. To recover anything more, Panatier and Darren McDowell had to prove gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence — a demanding evidentiary bar in a Texas workplace-death case.

The exposure proof was built conservatively on purpose. Industrial hygienists reconstructed Rogers's dose from the asbestos-containing machine brakes and overhead pipe insulation, counting only his machine and the two beside it even though as many as eight surrounded him, and compared the cumulative figure with published mesothelioma-risk research. The knowledge proof ran back decades: asbestos hazards in the industrial literature by the 1930s, no asbestos warnings posted in the plant until 1984, none ever on the machines themselves, and Goodyear replacing the machines and abating the insulation in the mid-1980s.

After a three-week trial the jury found causation and gross negligence proved, and awarded $18.6 million, including $15 million in exemplary damages. The Dallas Court of Appeals upheld the findings as supported by legally sufficient evidence of extreme risk and conscious indifference, and the Texas Supreme Court denied review.

Ledford

Panatier led the 2007 trial for Rafe Ledford with Jessica Dean, over asbestos gaskets inside the General Motors diesel engines Ledford served with in the Navy. Proving it meant reconstructing naval history and engine identification before the medicine ever entered the room. The jury returned $1.12 million.

Practice, Art, and Fiction

Panatier took a humanities degree from the University of Texas in 1998 and graduated from its law school in 2001. He is a shareholder and Executive Committee member at Simon Greenstone Panatier, where his practice is toxic-exposure trials.

He is also a visual artist and a novelist. His published books include The Phlebotomist, Stringers, The Redemption of Morgan Bright and Worry Box — an output running parallel to the trial work, and, like it, mostly concerned with what large systems do to the individual bodies inside them.