Jessica M. Dean

The Coogan Verdict Preserved

Jessica M. Dean and Ben Adams tried Doy Coogan’s Washington mesothelioma case for twelve weeks. The jury heard product history, medical causation, the progression of Coogan’s final illness, and the losses carried by his wife and daughters before returning a unanimous $81.5 million verdict against Genuine Parts and NAPA.

On July 8, 2021, the Washington Supreme Court reinstated the verdict in full. It held that the defense lifespan opinion lacked a sufficient factual basis and that appellate review could not replace a supported jury valuation of noneconomic loss. Dean and Adams’s trial record supplied the testimony, objections, expert foundations, and damages evidence supporting the judgment.

Charles and the First Archive

Dean’s first mesothelioma client was a sixty-two-year-old sign maker named Charles. As a young man, he repaired equipment at a naval shipyard. Gaskets and packing released asbestos around work he had no reason to understand as dangerous.

By the time Dean met him, he had retired but still made signs for his church when his health permitted. He lost weight, underwent chemotherapy, entered two drug trials, and lived under constant pain medication while the legal team traced products, equipment, work areas, testing, and company knowledge. The case concluded shortly before his death.

Charles’s case exposed the evidentiary imbalance that would define Dean’s practice. The companies generated specifications, sales records, internal memoranda, test results, and industrial-hygiene files. The worker generated none of the documents later needed to prove what entered his lungs. The lawyer had to rebuild the breathing conditions of an ordinary workday from an archive organized around products and commerce rather than the person performing the labor.

Dean had begun her career representing nursing-home residents, hospital patients, and workers denied wages. Charles turned her toward asbestos litigation. The investigation was measured in months and years; his remaining life was not.

Reconstructing Fifty Years of Avon Use

Rita-Ann Chapman began using Avon talcum powders in 1954 when she was eight. She applied the products multiple times each week through 1978, resumed in 1995, and continued until 2010. Decades later, she developed mesothelioma.

Like nearly every consumer who uses a household product across half a century, Chapman had not saved every bottle. The case therefore could not depend on testing the exact powder shaken onto her face and body in childhood. Dean, Adams, and Rachel Gross built the trial through several independent routes: Avon’s historical documents, records concerning the mines that supplied its talc, laboratory work, mineral analysis, product distribution, frequency of use, and medical testimony connecting the exposure to disease.

The jury found Avon liable for failure to warn, manufacturing and design defects, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation, and fraudulent concealment. It apportioned ninety percent of the fault to Avon. The judgment against Avon included $40,831,453 in compensatory damages and $10.3 million in punitive damages.

Because no product container remained, the team used corporate records, mine and laboratory evidence, Chapman’s history of use, and medical testimony to prove exposure and causation.

The Chapman Appeal

Avon challenged the expert testimony concerning asbestos in its talc, the medical causation opinions, the exclusion of a late-disclosed corporate witness, and the sufficiency of the evidence. Dean joined Shirley and Adams as counsel for the Chapman family on appeal.

The California Court of Appeal examined how the trial record had been built. It found no abuse of discretion in the expert rulings and held that Avon had not carried the demanding appellate burden required to challenge evidentiary sufficiency. On February 11, 2026, the court affirmed the judgment; the opinion was certified for publication on March 4.

Chapman died in March 2025 while the appeal was pending. Her husband, Gary, continued as successor in interest. The judgment endured because the record did not rest on a single test, witness, or inference. It showed product composition, source material, use, exposure intensity, medical mechanism, and the trial court’s reasons for admitting and excluding testimony.

Six Children and a Corporate Split

Theresa Garcia used Johnson’s Baby Powder for most of her life. She applied it to herself and later to her children and grandchildren. She was diagnosed with mesothelioma in January 2020 at age fifty-two and died that July. Her daughter Stephanie Salcedo continued the case for Garcia’s estate and six children.

Johnson & Johnson’s consumer business had passed through a divisional merger and later corporate separation. Talc liabilities were assigned to one entity while operating assets, brands, management, personnel, and product lines continued through other companies. The Garcia trial therefore addressed both product causation and the successor entities legally responsible after the restructuring.

Dean tried the case with Adams, Mark Buha, and Christian Luciano Santiago. After four weeks, the Cook County jury awarded $45 million. It allocated fifteen percent of the responsibility to Johnson & Johnson, fifteen percent to Holdco, and seventy percent to Kenvue. Special findings treated Holdco and Kenvue as successors because the business continued through the same enterprise and product line.

Illinois Recognizes Lost-Years Damages

The Garcia verdict separated two bodies of law. The family received $12 million under the Wrongful Death Act. The estate received $33 million under the Survival Act: $30 million for the years mesothelioma took from Garcia’s life and $3 million for pain, suffering, emotional distress, disfigurement, and loss of normal life.

The trial court later added $2,657,835.92 in prejudgment interest. On appeal, the defendants challenged the lost-years award, expert rulings, successor liability, and the interest statute. Shirley, Rebecca Cucu, and Lina Chagoya handled the DOBS appellate work with Illinois counsel.

In July 2026, the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed. It held that the loss of years was an injury Garcia experienced while alive once the disease drastically shortened her life; the claim did not disappear when her estate continued it. New Jersey successor law applied because the continuing entities had meaningful ties there, while the temporary Texas corporations had been created for the restructuring. The court also upheld the ministerial addition of prejudgment interest.

A Nonprofit Leader in Baltimore

Cherie Craft built Smart from the Start, a nonprofit supporting children and families through trauma-informed community programs. She used Johnson’s Baby Powder daily for decades and was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma in January 2024.

Dean tried the Baltimore case with Kathy Farinas, Venus Burns, Daniel Brown, and Matthew Kiely. Dean and the team presented evidence on talc sourcing, asbestos testing, Craft’s decades of use, medical causation, warnings, and what the companies told consumers and regulators.

On December 22, 2025, the jury awarded $59.84 million in compensatory damages. It also awarded $1 billion in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson and $500 million against Pecos River Talc. The jury separately assessed Craft’s medical expenses, lost work, pain, and other compensatory harm before awarding punitive damages for the companies’ conduct.

Four Verdicts, Four Damage Structures

Coogan, Chapman, Garcia, and Craft produced large numbers, but they did not ask juries to answer the same damages question. Coogan separated one man’s suffering from the consortium and services lost by his family. Chapman combined compensatory damages with a punitive finding against Avon. Garcia divided wrongful-death loss from injuries preserved through the Survival Act and then added prejudgment interest. Craft separated nearly $60 million of compensatory harm from punitive awards directed at two corporate defendants.

On appeal, courts may examine expert admissibility, jury instructions, corporate succession, constitutional objections, and whether substantial evidence supports each damages category.

Trial Preparation Through Appeal

Dean and Adams tried Coogan, with Shirley leading the successful Washington Supreme Court appeal. Dean also helped try Chapman and remained on the appellate team when the California judgment was affirmed. In Garcia, Dean tried the case and Shirley, Cucu, and Chagoya defended the judgment on appeal.

An appeal proceeds on the existing record. The testimony, exhibits, objections, offers of proof, verdict forms, and posttrial rulings become the entire world of the case. A loosely framed trial question can later be treated as waived on appeal. An expert opinion without a traceable basis can disappear. A damages theory left undifferentiated on the verdict form can become impossible to defend.

When Dean says “a case can live for years,” she is describing the continuity between trial and appeal: the same testimony, exhibits, and preserved objections support both closing argument and appellate briefing.

Eight Children, an IHOP, and a Courtroom

Dean grew up in St. Louis as 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, learning to listen to strangers who often explained what they needed before they knew how to ask for it.

Debate introduced the possibility of college and helped her pursue 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. She later joined Amin Omar, Trey Branham, and Lisa Shirley in the firm that bears their names.

Her grandmother’s Avon route and her father’s aircraft work now sit inside a practice spanning consumer talc and industrial asbestos. Familiar products still require manufacturers to understand and disclose what they carry into a home or workplace.

Remembering the Clients

Dean has described using music before trial to focus on the client whose life must remain visible throughout a document-heavy case.

Charles repaired shipyard equipment and made signs for his church. Doy Coogan restored cars and ran excavation machinery. Rita-Ann Chapman began using powder at eight. Theresa Garcia powdered her children and grandchildren. Cherie Craft built an organization for families facing trauma.

Her trial records connect mines, formulations, suppliers, tests, and corporate reorganizations to the people who used the products and developed disease.