$8 Million Verdict for Man Who Died of Mesothelioma at 38 From Asbestos on His Stepfather's Clothes
After trial: Affirmed. The $8,000,000 compensatory verdict (May 22, 2019) stood after the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals affirmed on May 14, 2021, certiorari was denied and the mandate issued February 9, 2022.
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.
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. 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. 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 Richland County jury awarded Michael Perry, a 53-year-old man diagnosed with mesothelioma, $63.4 million on August 15, 2024. The award was $32.6 million in compensatory damages plus $30 million in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson and $760,000 against American International Industries. Perry alleged asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder and other talc products caused his cancer. Johnson & Johnson said it would appeal.
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.
Related product liability verdicts
Sullivan Papain was among the firms representing New York State against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, securing a $25 billion recovery through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.
As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.
After fifteen years of litigation and three failed bankruptcy maneuvers by Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries, Ashcraft and Gerel attorneys R. Bryant McCulley and Michelle Parfitt helped negotiate a global, uncapped settlement of at least $5.5 billion covering approximately 76,000 ovarian-cancer claims.