From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Huge jury awards provide incentive to settle cases
By Paul Hampel
Copyright 2004, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
09/18/2004

In the last decade, 5,150asbestos suits have been filed in Madison County circuit court. Only five have made it to trial.
Plaintiff attorney Randall Bono, with the SimmonsCooper firm of East Alton, has won two of them. The size of the verdicts is a big reason that defendants are loath to go to trial, and instead settle.
In April 2003, Bono won a $250 million verdict against U.S. Steel on behalf of Roby Whittington, 71, of Gary, Ind. Whittington's suit alleged that he contracted mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by asbestos, while working at U.S. Steel's Gary works. Whittington died of the disease in January.
The verdict set a national record for a single asbestos plaintiff, topping Bono's previous asbestos mark of $34.1 million in a verdict against Shell Oil in 2000.
A juror in Whittington's case, Charles London, 55, of Edwardsville, said in an interview that he had urged a large award to "teach a lesson" to the steel company.
"I was angry at U.S. Steel," London said. "And when someone (during deliberations) brought up that maybe the steel company ought to be penalized for an amount of, like, $50 million, I said, 'His life is over! It ought to be 10 times that!'"
Bono and his co-counsel, Michael Brickman of Charleston, S.C., argued that U.S. Steel knew that asbestos abounded at the plant, where it was used as insulation for pipes and boilers, but that it failed to warn its workers or equip them with respirators.
U.S. Steel's attorneys, led by Ed Matushek of Chicago, sought to have the case dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, claiming it should have been tried under an Indiana worker's compensation law, which covers on-the-job injuries.
Judge Nicholas G. Byron rejected the motion.
Jurors recalled Bono as meticulously prepared and a bit of a showman.
"He's theatrical, but very, very organized," said London, who does maintenance work at General Chemical Corp. in East St. Louis.
"Bono would deliver his facts bam, bam, bam, bam. And his expressions, that smirk, for lack of a better word, that he'd make when the defense was talking. It was like he was saying, 'Yeah, right!'"
Another juror, Lewis Kessel, 48, of Edwardsville, remarked on the sharp contrast in styles between Bono and the other attorneys.
"When the defense attorney said something Bono didn't like, he'd turn red in the face and go right back at them," Kessel said. "The other attorneys would object politely when they disagreed, and would want to talk it over quietly with the judge."
London said that before the trial, he had felt incredulous whenever he read news accounts of enormous verdicts in personal injury cases.
Since the trial, London said, he has felt "twinges" about whether he and his fellow jurors went too far.
"I'm not ashamed, but I do have a vague discomfort with the amount," he said. "I think, possibly, that I did get caught up in the intensity of the trial."
In the end, the case was settled. The amount was not disclosed, but was reported to be less than $50 million.