The Asbestos Came Home on His Stepfather's Work Clothes. He Was a Child at the Time, and He Died of Mesothelioma at 38.
After trial: Final and affirmed. The jury returned $8,000,000 in compensatory damages on May 22, 2019 after a thirteen-day trial in the District Court of Pontotoc County, No. CJ-2016-00057, Judge Steven Kessinger. National Oilwell Varco and Montello moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict; the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals affirmed on May 14, 2021 in No. DF-118290, certiorari was denied, and the mandate issued February 9, 2022. We publish the compensatory award only. The docket records a second-stage verdict form, which in Oklahoma practice means punitive damages went to the jury, but it does not state what if anything was awarded, so we say nothing about punitive damages here. On caps: Oklahoma's $350,000 non-economic cap in 23 O.S. § 61.2 never reached wrongful death, and by the date of this verdict it was void in any event, struck down as a special law a month earlier in Beason v. I. E. Miller Services, Inc., 2019 OK 28. All defendants were private corporations, so the Governmental Tort Claims Act limits that cut so many Oklahoma recoveries do not apply. The appellate decision issued as an unpublished summary opinion, so the OSCN docket rather than a reported opinion is the citable record.
Won by Dean Omar Branham Shirley, LLP.
Brennen Atkeson was exposed to asbestos as a child, second-hand, from dust carried into the family home on the work clothes of his stepfather, an oilfield worker. The fibers came from raw asbestos put into drilling-mud products and from drilling-rig products. He developed mesothelioma and died at 38.
What happened
Brennen James Atkeson never worked with asbestos. He was a child when he was exposed to it.
His stepfather, Ronnie Pratt, worked in the oilfield. The asbestos came home in the dust on his work clothes, into the house where Atkeson lived. The fibers originated as raw asbestos manufactured by Union Carbide and distributed by Montello into drilling-mud products, and in drilling-rig products manufactured by National Oilwell Varco.
This is the category of case lawyers call take-home exposure, and the claim is narrower than it first sounds. It is not that the defendants failed to protect the workers who handled their products. It is that they failed to warn those workers that the product would travel home on their clothing and reach whoever lived there.
Atkeson developed mesothelioma. He filed suit and then died of it, at 38. His estate was substituted and the case went on.
The trial in Pontotoc County lasted thirteen days. On May 22, 2019 the jury found the defendants negligent for failing to give that warning and awarded $8,000,000.
The appeal turned on a point of pretrial practice rather than asbestos science. The defendants wanted to shift blame to third parties at trial. The Court of Civil Appeals held they had forfeited that: they had failed to answer pretrial discovery identifying any third party who might share responsibility, and having a duty to warn, they could not relieve themselves of it by passing it along to third parties they had never identified. The verdict was affirmed on May 14, 2021, certiorari was denied, and the mandate issued on February 9, 2022.
The estate was represented by Lisa W. Shirley and Ben Braly of Dean Omar Branham Shirley in Dallas, as lead trial counsel, with George Webster Braly and Mark Joseph Buha of Braly Braly Speed and Morris in Ada as local counsel.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.OSCN district court docket, Pontotoc County No. CJ-2016-00057 before Judge Steven Kessinger: the Oklahoma venue; the party list showing Kim Fox-Jones, Khaliliah Atkeson and Brennen Atkeson as plaintiffs against the corporate defendants; the Phase I and second-stage verdict forms filed 05/22/2019; the journal entry of judgment; the JNOV motions by National Oilwell Varco and Montello; the MANDATE - AFFIRMED entry; and the attorney entries for 'BRANHAM, DEAN OMAR, LLP' and 'BRALY BRALY SPEED & MORRIS'
- 2.OSCN appellate docket No. DF-118290 (consolidated with 118295): the May 14, 2021 opinion affirming, the petitions for certiorari by National Oilwell Varco and by Union Carbide and Montello, the MANDATE ISSUED entry of February 9, 2022, and the attorneys block listing Lisa W. Shirley of Dallas, Ben Braly, and George Webster Braly of Ada on the appellee's side
More proven verdicts from Dean Omar Branham Shirley, LLP
All Dean Omar Branham Shirley, LLP proven verdicts →On October 6, 2025, a Los Angeles County jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966 million to the family of Mae K. Moore, a mother of three who died of mesothelioma in December 2021 at age 88 after decades of using the company's talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower. The award comprised $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, reported at the time as the largest talc-mesothelioma verdict ever returned against Johnson & Johnson. The honest frame: on March 13, 2026, the trial judge, Ruth Ann Kwan, vacated the entire $950 million punitive award, finding the malice showing insufficient, while leaving the $16 million compensatory judgment intact. Both sides have said they will appeal. Dean Omar Branham Shirley tried the case for the Moore family, and this page documents it as part of the public record.
In July 2023, after a two-phase trial before Judge Cary Nishimoto in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a jury awarded roughly $107 million, $32 million compensatory and $75 million punitive, to the family of Joel Hernandezcueva, a janitor who died of pleural mesothelioma in 2014 in his mid-40s after asbestos exposure at the Park Place complex in Irvine. The jury found raw-asbestos supplier Union Carbide acted with malice and assigned it the largest share of fault. The honest frame: on December 12, 2023, Judge Nishimoto set the verdict aside in its entirety, granting judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a new trial on findings of juror misconduct, misconduct by plaintiffs' counsel, insufficient evidence, and excessive damages. Plaintiffs' counsel said they would appeal, and no published decision reinstating the verdict appears in the public record as of this writing. Dean Omar Branham Shirley tried the 2023 case, and this page documents it as part of the public record.
A Portland jury awarded $34.2 million to Richard Long, a former Swan Island shipyard laborer diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, after hearing that John Crane Inc. knew its asbestos gaskets and packing were dangerous decades before it warned anyone who worked with them.
William Berry worked at the West Monroe Paper Mill from 1961 to 2010. Foster Wheeler installed the mill's two five-story boilers in the mid-1960s, sheathed in asbestos, and came back every year to strip and reinstall that asbestos in what he described as a dust storm. He wore his work clothes home; his wife Lynda washed them daily for decades. In 2015, at 65, she was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma. An Ouachita Parish jury awarded medical expenses but nothing for her suffering; the judge added $3,000,000 in general damages on JNOV. The judgment against Foster Wheeler, one-half virile share of $4,500,000, was $2,250,000, affirmed in 2019.
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