From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Bono's firm opened floodgate to asbestos lawsuits here
By Paul Hampel
Copyright 2004, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
09/18/2004Lawyer Randall Bono catches up on his e-mail and phone calls at his office in East Alton. Bono is a former judge who is now with SimmonsCooper, where he concentrates on asbestos litigation.
(Huy Richard Mach/P-D)

Randall Bono inherited his ribald wit and stocky physique from his late father, a former Marine who ran a butcher shop in Granite City.
He credits his late mother, an accountant for several Madison County law firms, for his facility with big numbers.
The gifts from each helped him rise to the top of Madison County's lucrative asbestos bar.
That ascent began in 1978 when Bono, a few years out of law school at the University of Louisville, started his own firm. A year later, his friend, William R. Haine, became his partner.
By the early 1980s, Bono and Haine were working out of an office in a converted grocery in Wood River, dealing in personal injury suits — railroad and construction claims, vehicle accidents, workers' compensation.
Bono's practice, and life, changed one day in 1986 when a Chicago lawyer, Mike Cascino, walked into the office.
Bono recalled: "He asked me what my union contacts were with the chemical and atomic workers. And then he told us about asbestos."
The new firm of Bono, Haine and Cascino began offering mass lung screenings to hundreds of local steel workers, pipefitters and refinery crewmen.
In 1985, one asbestos claim was filed in Madison County. In 1986, spurred in part by Bono's new firm, about 1,500 were filed. The flood — in Madison County and nationally — had begun.
But the partnership of Bono, Haine and Cascino did not survive the year.
Cascino said he showed up for work Oct. 24, 1986, to find that his key would not fit in the firm's front door.
"What happened was that (Bono and Haine) decided one day that they wanted all the cases and were cutting me out," Cascino said.
The partners filed suits against each other before settling. When asked for details, Cascino said, "Let's just say that Randy helped pay for my kids' college educations."
Bono refused to discuss the matter. "We're prohibited by the canons of ethics from speaking ill of anyone, particularly other lawyers and judges," he said.
In 1988, Haine left asbestos litigation to successfully run for Madison County state's attorney.
That year, Bono and nationally known asbestos litigator Ron Motley of South Carolina (later to gain fame as the Big Tobacco litigator) tried the county's first asbestos case to a verdict. The jury awarded $2.5 million to the plaintiff, who suffered from asbestosis, a stiffening of lung tissue. The award set a national record for someone not suffering from a malignant asbestos disease.
Retired at 42
By the early 1990s, Bono was getting rich fast in a partnership with three other lawyers. But the asbestos grind was taking its toll.
He was living alone in an apartment, and flying weekly to Florida, where he had moved his family in 1984 because of his son's asthma.
"I was burned out," he said in an interview at the ranch home he bought two years ago in the middle-class Dunlap Lake area of Edwardsville. "Every client I was actively working with was dead or dying, and it just got to me."
In 1994, Bono, then 42, sold his interest in the law firm and retired to Florida.
He hoped to make up for lost time with his family, only to find that his children had reached the age when it is not cool to hang out with dad. "I read books," he recalled. "It was the first time I was able to relax and not worry about what disaster would befall me today.
"After six months of that, my mind turned to mush."
In November 1995, his old friend Bill Haine called. There was an opening to fill the final year of the term of a circuit judge who was retiring.
The Illinois Supreme Court appointed Bono to the slot at the recommendation of Justice Moses W. Harrison II, himself a former chief judge in Madison County.
The possibility of running for the job the next year was not an option; another candidate already had the backing of the Democratic Party.
But when an associate judge's position opened up in 1996, Bono was elected by the county's circuit judges the next year.
Bono said that he did not handle any asbestos litigation while on the bench.
His more noteworthy cases included two class-action suits against Ameritech alleging that the phone company charged customers for wire-maintenance service whether they ordered it or not.
The settlements in both cases totaled $225 million against the company. Bono awarded $16 million in legal fees to the firm of Stephen M. Tillery of Belleville. As their share, customers got phone cards for $5 in free calls, and one free use each month for several months of special services such as last-number redial.
Afterward, Bono told a reporter, "If lawyers never get the victims a penny back but stop the fraud, isn't the public better off for it?"
Back to asbestos
In 2000, lawyer John Simmons called Bono with a job offer.
"I got to work on asbestos, he'd take care of the administrative, anything to do with running a huge business, and all I had to do was work up the cases," Bono said.
"It was the same work as before, but without the heartbreak of taking depositions from dying people."
Asked for details of Simmons' offer, Bono would only say, "I get a salary and a bonus."
Haine, now a state senator, rejoined Bono at SimmonsCooper last year. Haine said he receives a salary that is "under six figures" annually and a bonus. He would not disclose its amount. "They gave me a place to hang my hat and shingle," Haine said.
As to his duties, Haine said: "I do some wills and things. I do what they ask me to do, and I'm available. I may be in there during the preparation of an asbestos case and will offer some advice."
Though Bono had been away from trial lawyering for six years before joining SimmonsCooper, within six weeks he won a then-record $34 million verdict for a retiree who blamed his mesothelioma on exposure to asbestos dust at Shell Oil Co.'s Wood River refinery. Randall Bono
Age: 52
Residence: Edwardsville and Sarasota, Fla.
Education: Roxana High School, Millikin University and University of Louisville Law School.
Professional: Private practice in Madison County 1977 to 1994; circuit judge in Madison County, 1995-96; associate circuit judge in Madison County, 1997-2000; litigator with SimmonsCooper since 2000.
Family: Wife, Jo Ann; three grown children, Olivia, Christopher and Stacie.
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