$20 Million and Counting: Missouri Mesothelioma Verdicts

St. Louis has been one of the most consequential jurisdictions in the country for asbestos litigation for more than two decades. The city’s combination of industrial history, experienced plaintiffs’ bar, and jury pool familiar with the human cost of asbestos has produced a steady pattern of significant verdicts for people with mesothelioma.

The city’s role as a litigation venue reflects the scale of asbestos exposure across Missouri. Manufacturing workers, auto mechanics, railroad employees, and their families have turned to St. Louis courts to hold companies accountable for decades of asbestos use.

Major Missouri Mesothelioma Verdicts

$20 Million: Trokey v. Ford Motor Company (Brake Products)

In March 2022, a St. Louis jury awarded $20 million to William “Bill” Trokey, a 76-year-old Missouri mechanic, and his wife Cathy after finding Ford Motor Company liable for Bill’s mesothelioma. The award included $10 million in compensatory damages and $10 million to Cathy for loss of consortium. The case was tried before the Hon. Christopher E. McGraugh in the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis.

Trokey had worked part-time at St. Louis service stations from 1960 to 1968, sanding and replacing Ford drum brakes that contained chrysotile asbestos. He was diagnosed in 2020 and died in April 2022, shortly after the verdict. The Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District (ED110915), affirmed the award in 2023, leaving the $20 million verdict standing.

Auto mechanics who worked on brakes before the phase-out of asbestos friction products in the 1990s inhaled fibers during every brake job, with exposure accumulating over years and decades. Brake mechanics are among the highest-risk occupations for mesothelioma nationally.

$8.4 Million: Bennett v. Ford Motor Company (2019)

On August 30, 2019, a St. Louis jury awarded $8.4 million to Alfred “Al” Bennett and his wife Pam after finding Ford Motor Company and other defendants liable for Bennett’s mesothelioma. The award included $5,725,000 in actual damages to Alfred, $708,000 to Pam, and $2 million in punitive damages. The case was filed in the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis under docket number 1822-CC10744.

Bennett worked as a mechanic at Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln dealerships and alleged exposure to asbestos in Ford brakes, clutches, and gaskets. The verdict reflects the same Ford brake-mechanic exposure pattern that drove the later Trokey and Behling awards.

$6 Million: Behling v. Ford Motor Company (2022)

In November 2022, a St. Louis jury awarded $6 million to the family of Linda Behling, who died of mesothelioma in 2019 at age 70. Behling and her husband had worked for years at manufacturing companies in the Springfield, Missouri area, and the case alleged exposure to asbestos brake dust through her husband’s work. Ford was among the named defendants.

The verdict was entered in November 2022. Appellate history is not confirmed in available secondary sources, so the award is reported here as entered rather than affirmed.

Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court and Missouri Jurisdiction

In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, 137 S. Ct. 1773, narrowing the circumstances in which state courts can exercise specific personal jurisdiction over claims by non-resident plaintiffs against non-resident defendants. The decision reshaped Missouri’s approach to talc and asbestos cases involving out-of-state plaintiffs filed in St. Louis.

Two large St. Louis talc verdicts illustrate the shift:

• Fox v. Johnson & Johnson ($72 million, February 2016) was vacated in October 2017 by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District (ED104580), for lack of personal jurisdiction over the Alabama plaintiff’s claims against J&J under BMS.
• Ristesund v. Johnson & Johnson ($55 million, May 2016) was reversed on June 29, 2018, by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District (ED104887), on the same BMS jurisdictional grounds for the South Dakota plaintiff.
• Ingham v. Johnson & Johnson ($4.69 billion, July 2018) was reduced to approximately $2.12 billion by the Missouri Court of Appeals (ED107137) on June 23, 2020, with the appellate court narrowing the case primarily to the five Missouri-resident plaintiffs and J&J’s Missouri contacts. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on June 1, 2021 (No. 20-1223), leaving the reduced verdict in place.

These cases involved talc-related ovarian cancer rather than mesothelioma, but the BMS framework now governs how non-resident asbestos plaintiffs establish jurisdiction in Missouri courts.

Why St. Louis Is a Major Asbestos Venue

St. Louis’s prominence in asbestos litigation stems from several factors. The city’s industrial history produced decades of occupational asbestos exposure across manufacturing, railroads, chemical processing, and construction, and the scale of that exposure provides a consistent stream of cases.

St. Louis judges and courts have also handled asbestos cases for decades, creating established procedures for case management, discovery, and trial scheduling. Across the Mississippi River, Illinois courts in Cook County share this deep asbestos litigation experience, and the two jurisdictions form one of the most active litigation corridors in the country.

St. Louis juries have seen the impact of asbestos exposure firsthand through the cases presented to them and through the city’s industrial history, a familiarity that has contributed to verdicts reflecting the severity of the disease.

Filing volumes confirm the trend. According to KCIC’s Asbestos Litigation: Year in Review 2023, St. Louis City ranked sixth among top U.S. jurisdictions for asbestos filings, with 168 filings representing a 20.9% increase over 2022. Madison and St. Clair Counties in Illinois topped the 2023 rankings. Mesothelioma and lung cancer claims drove the increase, alongside continued litigation over automotive brake products, industrial insulation, and other asbestos-containing materials.

St. Louis has also drawn sustained attention from tort-reform observers. The American Tort Reform Foundation’s 20-year retrospective on its Judicial Hellholes report records nine years in which St. Louis appeared on the main list, plus two years on the Watch List. The jurisdiction was ranked #1 in the 2017-2018 cycle and #6 in the 2025-2026 cycle.

Filing Deadlines

Missouri’s general personal-injury statute of limitations is five years under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120, with the discovery rule of § 516.100 setting the clock to begin when damages become capable of ascertainment, typically the date of mesothelioma diagnosis. For wrongful death claims, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.100 sets a three-year period running from the date of death.

A separate provision, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.097, is sometimes confused with the asbestos timeline. That statute is a 10-year statute of repose that applies only to architects, engineers, and builders of improvements to real property. It does not govern products-liability or asbestos-product claims, which remain subject to §§ 516.120 and 516.100.

Missouri’s five-year window is one of the longest in the country, but it should not lead to delay. The time required to investigate exposure history, identify all responsible companies, and prepare claims can be substantial, particularly for workers who held multiple jobs over decades. Consulting an attorney early allows for a more thorough investigation while witnesses and records are still available. People receiving a diagnosis should also review the current treatment landscape, which now includes immunotherapy combinations that have changed survival expectations for some patients.

Beyond Verdicts: Trust Funds and Settlements

Jury verdicts are only one component of mesothelioma compensation in Missouri. Most cases resolve through settlement rather than trial, and many families also recover from asbestos trust funds established by bankrupt manufacturers.

An experienced mesothelioma attorney can identify all applicable trusts based on a worker’s employment history at Missouri exposure sites and the specific asbestos products used at those sites. Trust fund claims proceed independently of lawsuits and can provide additional compensation on a faster timeline.