Jessica M. Dean

The Coogan Verdict and Washington Supreme Court Ruling

Dean and Ben Adams tried Doy Coogan’s Washington wrongful-death case against Genuine Parts Company and NAPA over asbestos-containing brakes, clutches, gaskets, and other products used in his automotive and excavation work. Across twelve weeks, the trial presented product history, exposure, medical causation, and damages evidence, and the jury returned a unanimous $81.5 million verdict.

The jury awarded $30 million for Coogan’s pain and suffering, $30 million for his widow’s loss of consortium, $20 million for his daughters’ loss of consortium, and $1.5 million for lost household services. The trial court excluded a defense lifespan opinion because the fluid buildup used to support it was equally attributable to the mesothelioma itself. After the Court of Appeals vacated the damages award, the Washington Supreme Court reversed that ruling on July 8, 2021, and reinstated the verdict in full. It held that the lifespan opinion lacked a sufficient factual basis and that an appellate court cannot displace a supported jury award based on a subjective reaction to its size. With postjudgment interest, the judgment exceeded $95 million.

Dean and Adams had built the Coogan record for three audiences from the start. Testimony and exhibits supported the jury’s liability and damages findings; objections and expert foundations supported the trial judge’s rulings; and the damages evidence remained legally sufficient when appellate judges read the cold record years later, without ever seeing the witnesses. All three layers held.

The Chapman Talc Judgment and Published Affirmance

Dean, Adams, and Rachel Gross represented Rita-Ann Chapman in a cosmetic-talc trial against Avon. Chapman had used Avon powders repeatedly from 1954 through 1978 and again from 1995 through 2010 — more than four decades of a daily ritual. The team used Avon’s historical documents, evidence about the mines that supplied its talc, laboratory and mineral analysis, product-distribution records, Chapman’s use history, and medical testimony to prove exposure and causation without relying on a saved container from each period, reconstructing the decades from the records the company itself had kept.

The jury found Avon liable for failure to warn, manufacturing and design defects, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation, and fraudulent concealment, apportioned 90 percent of the fault to Avon, and returned $40,831,453 in compensatory damages and $10.3 million in punitive damages against it. Dean later joined Lisa Shirley and Adams as appellate counsel. Avon challenged the expert testimony, the medical causation evidence, the exclusion of a late-disclosed corporate witness, and the sufficiency of the evidence. On February 11, 2026, the California Court of Appeal rejected every challenge and affirmed the judgment, and on March 4 the opinion was certified for publication — precedent now, available to every family that follows.

The Garcia Verdict and Illinois Affirmance

Dean tried Theresa Garcia’s cosmetic-talc case with Adams, Mark Buha, and Christian Luciano Santiago. Garcia had used Johnson’s Baby Powder on herself and later on her children and grandchildren for nearly five decades; she died of mesothelioma in July 2020, months after her diagnosis. The team addressed product exposure and medical causation and traced responsibility through the divisional merger and later separation of Johnson & Johnson’s consumer business — following the product line through every change of corporate form.

After four weeks, the Cook County jury awarded $45 million. It allocated 15 percent of the responsibility to Johnson & Johnson, 15 percent to Holdco, and 70 percent to Kenvue, with special findings that Holdco and Kenvue were successors because the business continued through the same enterprise and product line — the first verdict to reach the spinoff. The award included $12 million under the Wrongful Death Act for Garcia’s six children and $33 million under the Survival Act: $30 million for the years mesothelioma took from her and $3 million for pain, suffering, emotional distress, disfigurement, and loss of normal life. The trial court added $2,657,835.92 in prejudgment interest.

On July 10, 2026, the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, affirmed in a published opinion. The court upheld the loss-of-years award, the expert rulings, the application of New Jersey successor law to Holdco and Kenvue, and the statutory prejudgment interest, and it rejected the requests for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial.

Dean and the appellate team preserved each layer through trial and appeal: product causation, corporate continuity, the distinction between wrongful-death and survival damages, and the value of life years taken before death — a category the affirmance now anchors in Illinois law.

The Craft Baltimore Judgment

Cherie Craft built Smart from the Start, a nonprofit supporting children and families through trauma-informed community programs — a life spent repairing harm done to others.

Dean tried Craft’s Baltimore case with Kathy Farinas, Venus Burns, Daniel Brown, and Matthew Kiely. The trial evidence addressed Craft’s decades of Johnson’s Baby Powder use, talc sourcing and asbestos testing, medical causation, warnings, and the information supplied to consumers and regulators.

On December 22, 2025, the jury returned a verdict for Craft, and the Circuit Court for Baltimore City directed entry of a $59.84 million compensatory judgment against Johnson & Johnson, Pecos River Talc, Holdco, and Kenvue. The compensatory award included $3.54 million for future medical expenses, $2.3 million for past and future lost earnings or earning capacity, and $54 million in noneconomic damages. The court also directed entry of $1 billion in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson and $500 million against Pecos River Talc. The defendants announced that they would appeal.

The verdict measured Craft’s medical expense, lost work, pain, and other compensatory harms separately from the jury’s assessment of corporate conduct — each category proved on its own evidence, each standing on its own foundation.

The Trial Record and the Appellate Record

Dean has worked with Shirley from early in her asbestos career, and their division of labor runs through the major cases like a seam. Dean and Adams tried Coogan; Shirley carried the verdict through Washington’s Supreme Court. Dean helped try Chapman and remained on the appellate team when the California judgment was affirmed. Dean tried Garcia; Shirley, Cucu, and Chagoya defended the judgment on appeal.

The appellate record preserves expert-admissibility rulings, jury instructions, corporate-succession evidence, constitutional objections, and the evidentiary basis for each damages category. Dean’s trial preparation establishes that record before the verdict ever comes in, giving appellate counsel everything needed to defend the jury’s findings and the trial court’s rulings years later. It is trial work performed with the appeal already in mind — and it is why her verdicts keep standing.

Education and Practice

Dean grew up in St. Louis, one of eight children. Her father built airplanes at McDonnell Douglas and often worked more than eighty hours a week. Her grandmother sold Avon door to door. At sixteen, Dean began waitressing at IHOP and continued through college. Debate opened the possibility of college and helped her win scholarships. She earned degrees in economics and political science from Boston University, magna cum laude, and graduated cum laude from the University of Texas School of Law in 2003, later joining Amin Omar, Trey Branham, and Lisa Shirley in the firm that bears their names.

Before moving into asbestos litigation, Dean represented people injured in nursing homes and hospitals and workers seeking unpaid wages.

Her grandmother’s Avon route and her father’s aircraft work now sit inside a practice spanning consumer talc and industrial asbestos — both worlds of familiar products carried into homes and workplaces by people who trusted them. Dean’s cases test whether manufacturers understood those exposures, warned the people using the products, and preserved the records needed to trace responsibility decades later.

Her practice unites industrial-asbestos and consumer-talc litigation and includes product identification, corporate and scientific records, expert foundations, damages evidence, trial, and appellate work — the complete chain from exposure to affirmed judgment.