$34.2 Million for a Swan Island Shipyard Laborer Who Developed Mesothelioma From Gaskets and Packing
After trial: The verdict came from a retrial: the first trial, in the summer of 2025, ended in a mistrial in June after four days of deliberation. No appellate outcome has been reported.
Won by Dean Omar Branham Shirley, LLP.
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.
What happened
Richard Long spent thirteen years, from 1972 to 1985, in the engine rooms of commercial vessels at the Dillingham ship repair yard on Swan Island in Portland. He was a laborer and a member of Laborers Union Local 296, which in practice meant he assisted the machinists and tradesmen doing the skilled work: fetching, cleaning up, and handling whatever came out of a machine being torn down and rebuilt.
Much of what came out was gasket and packing material made by John Crane Inc. Gaskets seal the joints between metal parts and packing seals the point where a rotating shaft passes through a housing, and in the marine engine rooms of that era both were made with asbestos, because asbestos tolerates heat and pressure. Servicing that equipment meant scraping old gasket material off flanges and pulling old packing out of pump and valve stems, work that puts asbestos fibers into the air of an enclosed engine room.
In 2023, at 71, Long was diagnosed with biphasic pleural mesothelioma. The disease is a cancer of the lining of the lungs, it is caused by asbestos, it has a latency period measured in decades, and it is incurable.
The case Mark Linder and Lenny Sandoval of Dean Omar Branham Shirley built against John Crane was about timing. Their evidence was that the hazards of asbestos were documented in the industrial and medical literature as far back as the 1930s, that John Crane had actual knowledge of how dangerous its products were by the early 1970s, and that in the intervening years it did no meaningful testing of what its gaskets and packing released into the air when workers handled them. The company did not put asbestos warnings on those products until 1983. By then Long had been working around them for eleven years, and he would work around them for two more.
That gap, between what the company knew and when it told anyone, was the heart of the trial.
It took two trials to get an answer. The case was first tried in Multnomah County Circuit Court in the summer of 2025 and ended in a mistrial in June after the jury deliberated four days without reaching a verdict. The parties retried it. In September 2025, the second jury returned $34.2 million for Long.
The verdict is among the largest asbestos awards recorded in Oregon, a state whose shipyards, pulp mills, and power plants produced a long tail of occupational asbestos disease that is still working its way through the courts forty and fifty years after the exposures.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Asbestos and Mesothelioma Law Blog·Archived copy
- 2.MesoWatch: independent coverage naming Dean Omar Branham Shirley as trial counsel and detailing the John Crane knowledge timeline·Archived copy
- 3.Yahoo Finance carrying the Business Wire announcement of the verdict, which originates with the firm rather than an independent newsroom·Archived copy
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.
Evan Plotkin of Somers, Connecticut, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2021 and sued Johnson & Johnson, alleging decades of exposure to asbestos in its Baby Powder. A Bridgeport jury awarded $15 million in compensatory damages on October 15, 2024, and found the company's conduct warranted punitive damages. On October 1, 2025, the trial judge added $10 million in punitive damages, for a total of $25 million. Johnson & Johnson has appealed.
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