Clark Binkley

A Manhattan jury found in May 2019 that asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower caused Donna Olson's pleural mesothelioma, awarding $25 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages, the largest talc verdict in New York history. Jerome H. Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case. The trial court cut the award to $120 million in November 2020, and on July 19, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department reversed outright and directed judgment for Johnson & Johnson, holding that the plaintiffs' medical expert never gave a scientific expression of the minimum lifetime exposure needed to cause the disease.

Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg led the trial team that won a $117 million verdict for Stephen Lanzo III, the first jury finding that Johnson & Johnson talc caused a plaintiff's mesothelioma. The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the judgment in April 2021 over inadmissible expert testimony, and no retrial or final resolution has been publicly reported since, with J&J's talc bankruptcy filings stalling the litigation for years.

A Boston jury awarded $43.1 million on October 12, 2018 to the widow and son of Louis Summerlin, a former brake mechanic and lifelong menthol smoker who died of lung cancer in 2015 at 73, finding R.J. Reynolds' Salem and Kool cigarettes defectively designed and the company guilty of fraud, while clearing Philip Morris and an auto parts distributor. Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Michael Shepard of Shepard Law. It was the first trial in the country to take a lung cancer claim to verdict against both tobacco and asbestos defendants, and the largest verdict in New England that year.

In the first consolidated multi-plaintiff talc trial, a Middlesex County jury awarded $37.3 million on September 11, 2019 to four people who developed mesothelioma after their parents powdered them with Johnson's Baby Powder as children, and a second jury added $750 million in punitive damages in February 2020, which Judge Ana Viscomi cut to $186.5 million under New Jersey's five-times cap. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Chris Placitella and Chris Panatier. On October 3, 2023 the Appellate Division reversed every judgment and ordered new trials, holding that the trial court had admitted three plaintiffs' experts without the gatekeeping New Jersey law requires.

A Bergen County jury awarded $30,312,204 in February 2008 to the family of Mark Buttitta, who died of mesothelioma at 50 after breathing asbestos fibers his father carried home from GM parts warehouses and after his own college summers working there. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case, and the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the full award on April 5, 2010.