Chris J. Panatier

The nine-day trial before Judge D. Garrison Hill put in evidence that Seay opened and repaired asbestos-insulated equipment and that the industrial literature of the era already recommended warnings, respiratory protection and dust controls. Celanese had received a Union Carbide toxicology report, dated December 16, 1970, associating mesothelioma with even slight exposure. The evidence also included a February 1963 memorandum for the commercial hazards committee, which stressed the "serious legal hazard" in creating written reports or correspondence and urged keeping such documentation "to a minimum," and a confidential document of May 21, 1979, which called for a "backup statement" for plant supervisors to use when an employee asked about "suspect material."

On October 8, 2015, the Spartanburg County jury awarded $2 million on the survival claim, $5 million for wrongful death, $5 million for Linda Seay's loss of consortium, and $2 million in punitive damages: $14 million, on findings of willful, wanton and reckless conduct.

On appeal, Celanese relied on the maintenance contract. The company had outsourced all plant maintenance to Daniel Construction, required Daniel to insure those workers, and reimbursed the premiums. Seay, it argued, was its "statutory employee," and workers' compensation was his family's only remedy. The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment on February 13, 2019, including the punitive award and the admission of a hospice video, less than a minute long, in which Seay softly cried out, "Help me, Jesus." On August 11, 2021, the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed again. What is part of an owner's business, it held, is "a question of business judgment, not law," and the plant's owner had made a legitimate business decision to contract its maintenance out to a capable, insured contractor; Seay was not its statutory employee.

Cashmere Bouquet and Johnson's Baby Powder

Judith Winkel, a retired office clerk, used Colgate-Palmolive's Cashmere Bouquet talcum powder nearly every day for about fifteen years beginning in 1961 and was diagnosed with mesothelioma in January 2014. Panatier, David Greenstone and Kyle Tracy represented her and her husband, John, in Los Angeles, with Panatier as lead counsel. The proof traced the product from its historical talc sources through composition, testing and use, to inhalation and medical causation, and included evidence that Colgate did not test Cashmere Bouquet for asbestos until 1971.

On April 28, 2015, after about two hours of deliberation, the jury found Colgate liable for design defect under both the consumer-expectations and risk-benefit tests, for manufacturing defect, for failure to warn and for negligence, assigned the company ninety-five percent of the responsibility, and returned $13 million in compensatory damages, including $1.4 million for John Winkel's loss of consortium. It also found that Colgate acted with malice, and the parties settled on confidential terms before the jury deliberated on punitive damages.

Panatier and Greenstone, with Conor Nideffer, also represented Joanne Anderson, sixty-eight, of Williams, Oregon, who had used Johnson's Baby Powder on her children and, as an avid bowler, on her hands and shoes; experts estimated more than ten thousand applications. On May 29, 2018, a Los Angeles jury before Judge Gloria White-Brown awarded $21.75 million in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages, $25.75 million in all, and assigned Johnson & Johnson sixty-seven percent of the compensatory responsibility.

Eighty-Five Tire-Building Machines

Carl Rogers built tires at Goodyear's plant in Tyler, Texas, from 1974 to 2004, in a room with eighty-five tire-building machines set up in a grid. Asbestos came from the machines' brakes, from overhead pipe insulation disturbed during maintenance, and from compressed air used for cleaning, which raised clouds of dust. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in August 2008, nine years after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy for lung cancer, and died in September 2009, at sixty.

Because Goodyear subscribed to Texas workers' compensation, benefits were ordinarily the family's exclusive remedy. To recover anything more for his widow, Vicki, and their daughters, Natalie and Courtney, Panatier and Darren McDowell had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that gross negligence caused his death.

The family's experts reconstructed the dose. Steve Hays put Rogers's exposure from the pipe insulation at .426 fiber-years per cubic centimeter, and Dr. Edwin Holstein added .187 from brake replacements, counting only the two neighboring machines even though as many as eight surrounded him; they compared the cumulative .613 with published mesothelioma-risk research. Four of about three thousand workers at the Tyler plant had been diagnosed with mesothelioma.

The knowledge proof ran back decades. A publication from the 1930s warned that a visible cloud of asbestos dust, or even a hazy look in the air, meant a level hazardous to health and life, and it named brakes among the hazards. By 1972 an internal Goodyear communication stated that asbestos fiber inhalation had been implicated as a possible causative factor in a "form of cancer called a mesothelioma." Goodyear cited the "considerable expense and duration" of a monitoring and medical-surveillance program in seeking to avoid classification as an employer "where asbestos fibers are released." Signs warning of asbestos went up in the Tyler plant for the first time in 1984, and the machines and their instructions never carried a warning. By the mid-1980s Goodyear had replaced the machines and begun removing the insulation.

After a three-week trial in Dallas County in 2014, the jury found by clear and convincing evidence that asbestos from Goodyear caused Rogers's mesothelioma and that gross negligence caused his death, and it awarded $18.6 million: $900,000 for pecuniary losses, $2.7 million in noneconomic damages and $15 million in exemplary damages. On August 31, 2017, the Dallas Court of Appeals upheld the findings as supported by legally sufficient evidence of extreme risk and conscious indifference. It held that Goodyear had not preserved its argument that the radiation was an alternative cause, noting the pretrial finding of "no scientifically valid epidemiology" linking therapeutic radiation for lung cancer to mesothelioma. The Texas Supreme Court denied review on May 31, 2019.

Gaskets in Navy Diesel Engines

Rafe Ledford served as a Navy machinist from 1958 to 1962 and regularly repaired and maintained General Motors diesel engines sealed with asbestos gaskets. He was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma in June 2006. Panatier led the trial for Ledford and his wife, Evaline, with Jessica Dean, in Los Angeles Superior Court before Judge Aurelio Munoz. The proof ran from naval history and engine identification to industrial hygiene, with Frank Parker, and pathology, with Dr. Eugene Mark. On November 6, 2007, the jury returned $1.12 million against General Motors.

Law, Novels and Album Art

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 in Dallas, 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, and he plays drums and designs album art for metal bands. "Individuals taking irresponsible companies to court is the last check we have on corporate America," he has said.