Dara Hegar

Twenty-Two Lives, One Trial

Dara Hegar’s work in Ingham joined a common product and corporate record to twenty-two separate medical histories, preserving the evidence specific to each woman while coordinating a single six-week trial.

The women came from twelve states. They differed in age, family history, diagnosis, frequency of powder use, and the state law governing their claims. Their cases nevertheless shared a product, alleged defect, testing history, warning theory, and body of corporate evidence.

Hegar served on the trial team and coordinated documents, witness preparation, examination materials, legal issues, and the work of multiple lawyers.

Common Proof and Individual Causation

The plaintiffs alleged that long-term use of Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower exposed them to asbestos and caused ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson and its consumer-products subsidiary denied that the powders contained asbestos, disputed causation, and argued that twenty-two claims with different risk factors and governing laws should not proceed together.

More than thirty witnesses testified during the six-week trial. The plaintiffs’ team presented common evidence on talc sources, testing methods, product manufacture, warnings, corporate knowledge, and whether talc or asbestos can cause ovarian cancer. They then presented each woman’s years and frequency of use, medical history, competing risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, and loss.

A medical expert performed a differential diagnosis for every plaintiff. He explained what made each woman more or less likely to develop ovarian cancer and gave a separate causation opinion. The trial court likewise instructed the jury to evaluate each claim on its own merits.

The court devoted more than 140 transcript pages to plaintiff-specific verdict directors and governing law, allowing common evidence to be presented efficiently without merging the individual causation questions.

Six Weeks and Twenty-Two Verdicts

Six women had died before the trial began. For the living plaintiffs, the jury saw treatment, prognosis, and the disruption of ordinary life. For people who had died, Hegar and the team reconstructed the medical histories through spouses, records, and estate representatives.

In July 2018, the jury found the defendants liable and awarded $25 million in compensatory damages to each woman or family, totaling $550 million. It also awarded $990 million in punitive damages against the consumer-products company and $3.15 billion against the parent company. The original verdict totaled $4.69 billion.

The equal compensatory awards did not erase the separate records. The appellate court later emphasized that jurors had received individualized instructions and heard specific-causation testimony for each plaintiff. Similar injuries arising from the same products could support similar damages without proving that the jury had treated the women as interchangeable.

Jurisdiction in the Ingham Appeal

The appeal also turned on where each plaintiff’s claim arose. The Supreme Court’s personal-jurisdiction doctrine required every nonresident plaintiff to connect her own claim to Missouri. Fifteen women had used a Shower to Shower product manufactured, labeled, and packaged through a Missouri operation. Two nonresident women had used only Johnson’s Baby Powder made outside Missouri. The parent company also had a narrower Missouri connection than its consumer subsidiary.

The Missouri Court of Appeals therefore modified the judgment plaintiff by plaintiff and defendant by defendant. It removed two nonresident claims against the consumer subsidiary and limited the parent company’s liability to the five Missouri plaintiffs. It entered $500 million in compensatory damages against the consumer subsidiary, with the parent jointly and severally responsible for $125 million of that amount. It then entered $900 million in punitive damages against the subsidiary and $715,909,091 against the parent.

Because the parent’s $125 million compensatory obligation overlapped with the subsidiary’s $500 million obligation, the modified judgment totaled approximately $2.116 billion rather than adding every line as a separate recovery. In all other respects, the court affirmed.

The Missouri Supreme Court declined further review. On June 1, 2021, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. The result that survived was not the original $4.69 billion headline. It was the judgment reconstructed through personal jurisdiction, separate corporate responsibility, compensatory overlap, punitive ratios, and twenty remaining claims.

The Negotiating Committee

Hegar later helped divide opioid settlement money among Texas governments. Counties, cities, hospital districts, the Attorney General, and public-entity lawyers had filed claims in state and federal court. The negotiators had to define who could participate, which claims would be released, and how the money would be divided. They also had to identify high-need regions, fund hospitals, choose administrators, and specify which uses qualified as opioid abatement.

The executed Janssen Texas term sheet identifies Hegar as counsel for Tarrant County. It also names her among the attorneys authorized to represent the Texas Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee on the negotiating committee, together with Mikal Watts, Jeffrey Simon, and Dan Downey or their designees.

Hegar represented Tarrant County and the Texas Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee on a negotiating committee that also included the Attorney General’s office and representatives of counties, cities, and other public entities.

Seventy, Fifteen, Fifteen

The Texas term sheet divided opioid settlement proceeds into three shares. Fifteen percent went directly to counties and municipalities. Seventy percent went to the Texas Opioid Abatement Fund through the council responsible for regional and statewide remediation. Fifteen percent went to the state through the Attorney General.

The percentages divided the money among three needs. Local governments received a direct share for public-safety, health, and social-service costs. The state kept a share for statewide programs. The largest portion went to prevention, treatment, recovery, harm reduction, and the regions carrying the greatest burden.

The Janssen agreement placed approximately $268.38 million into Texas’s global abatement allocation before specified fees, costs, and direct county treatment. After the direct share for Bexar, Dallas, and Tarrant Counties, the term sheet identified approximately $39.49 million for subdivisions, $184.30 million for the abatement fund, and $39.49 million for the state.

The Janssen agreement covered one manufacturer. A broader package announced in 2022 combined Johnson & Johnson and major distributors for approximately $1.85 billion in Texas. Hegar served on the negotiating team with the Attorney General and other public-entity lawyers.

Texas Opioid Funds in Practice

A statewide settlement proves its value through administration over time. The political-subdivision share has produced recurring payments rather than one ceremonial transfer: approximately $47.1 million in March 2023, $9.2 million in April 2024, $44.8 million in April 2025, and more than $11.5 million in March 2026.

Hospital districts receive part of the abatement allocation under a separate statutory and regulatory structure. The council distributed $65.8 million in August 2024, $14.3 million in April 2025, and $11.8 million in April 2026. Recipients report annually on how the funds address opioid-related needs.

In June 2026, the council awarded eighty long-term community grants totaling $48.9 million across Texas’s twenty Regional Healthcare Partnerships. Other programs use dashboards, regional allocations, reimbursement rules, and grant cycles to turn settlement money into treatment and recovery programs.

The agreements established payment obligations and allocation rules; the council, grant programs, and reporting requirements then directed recurring distributions to counties, hospital districts, recovery programs, and community providers.

Three Weeks at the Reception Desk

Hegar entered private practice from the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, where she had served as briefing attorney to Justice Richard H. Edelman. Three weeks after joining the Lanier firm in 1999, she was standing near the reception desk when Mark Lanier asked whether she had ever watched jury selection.

The planned observation became an eight-week environmental trial involving alleged benzene contamination from an oil-well blowout into subdivision groundwater. Hegar reviewed hundreds of depositions, prepared numerous witnesses, mastered the scientific evidence, and helped organize a trial assembled on short notice.

The experience changed her intended path from appellate work to trial coordination. The appellate clerk had learned how a record looks after judgment. The new trial lawyer learned how that record is built in real time—one witness, exhibit, objection, and legal ruling at a time.

Second-Chair Trial Coordination

As second chair in the first Vioxx trial, Hegar coordinated documents, prepared examinations, closed legal gaps, and directed lawyers working on separate teams.

Hegar has described replacing bullet-point slides with a storyboard of photographs and records so the jury could follow the person, product, warning history, medical event, and consequence in sequence.

Trial organization affects what evidence a jury can hear. A missing foundation can exclude an exhibit. A witness called too early can leave an expert without necessary facts. An unresolved instruction can alter the burden presented to the jury. A twenty-two-plaintiff trial magnifies every dependency.

Managing Litigation Across Three Offices

By 2015, Hegar had become firmwide managing attorney, coordinating lawyers and litigation across Houston, New York, and Los Angeles. Her work extends across product liability, pharmaceuticals, asbestos, toxic exposure, business litigation, and public-entity mass torts.

Managing a national docket requires common discovery, local counsel, client communication, experts, trial calendars, preservation of appellate issues, settlement work, and enough independence for each client’s facts to remain visible. In asbestos litigation alone, Hegar had managed nearly one thousand cases and several trial teams by the time of her 2013 interview.

Education and Appellate Training

Hegar earned her political-science degree with honors from Texas A&M University, then completed both a master’s degree in international relations and her law degree at St. Mary’s University. She served as an associate editor of the law journal before the appellate clerkship that began her professional career.

Her appellate training informs how she prepares trial records, while her settlement work extends beyond negotiation into the allocation and administration needed to deliver public funds.

Managing Trials and Settlement Payments

Ingham required one jury to evaluate common product evidence while deciding twenty-two individual claims. The appeal then separated those claims again through personal jurisdiction and corporate identity. The Texas opioid settlements required counties, cities, the state, hospitals, and a steering committee to agree on shares before any local program could receive money.

Before verdict, Hegar coordinates documents, experts, witnesses, instructions, and presentation. In public settlements, she helps shape the terms and allocation structures that move funds from an executed agreement into recurring distributions.