Vernon worked at a grocery store and earned a modest 50 cents per hour when he was given an opportunity to triple his salary as a union painter. Taking this new job, Vernon soon found himself working as a painter in the construction of strip malls, homes and skyscrapers. At work he was regularly in contact with various asbestos containing painting products such as block fillers, texturing paints and drywall compounds. Some of these products had been banned in 1978 by the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). The CPSC found some of them to be “unreasonably dangerous” as they were likely to cause cancer in users. Unfortunately for Vernon and his wife Patsy, the CPSC was right.

Vernon and other commercial painters worked with these dangerous painting products daily until their eventual ban. This despite the fact that the CPSC unequivocally advised the asbestos industry that using asbestos laden products only four times could result in thousands of excess cancer victims.

According to the Plaintiff’s attorney, “The asbestos industry has spent decades developing false science used to argue that asbestos is safe.” The industry argued in this instance that “Chrysotile” and “Calidria” brand asbestos do not cause cancer. This argument was proven to be false, and the jury awarded Vernon and Patsy roughly $11 million. Union Carbide Corporation, the asbestos mining company, was apportioned 40 percent of the blame in this litigation while the companies that manufactured the painting products Vernon used were given the remainder of the liability. Most of these manufacturers made the decision to settle prior to, or during the trial.