San Francisco, CA commercial litigation attorney Edward Hugo gives a brief history of asbestos litigation. He provides a concise history of asbestos litigation. In 1966, Claude Tomplait filed the first third-party asbestos claim in court against 11 asbestos insulation manufacturers. He went to trial but lost. Three years later, Clarence Burrell filed a nearly identical case in Texas and won, receiving $80,000—a significant sum at the time—which changed how individuals with asbestos-related diseases could be compensated. Claims were no longer limited to workers’ compensation; lawsuits against manufacturers and distributors became a viable avenue for recovery.

By 1982, Johns Manville, the largest U.S. asbestos product manufacturer and self-proclaimed leader in the industry, filed for bankruptcy, citing 11,000 pending cases. Around the same time, Owens Corning Fiberglass—the “Pink Panther”—filed for bankruptcy, citing $7 billion in debt. Over the years, legal standards evolved: initially requiring traditional causation, courts later adopted “but-for” causation, then “substantial factor,” which was further diluted to “increased risk.” As a result, products that traditionally did not produce asbestos dust, such as gaskets and packing, became targets, and even products not intentionally containing asbestos, like talcum powder, faced litigation. By 2021, Johnson & Johnson placed its talc business into bankruptcy. To date, hundreds of bankruptcies have resulted from asbestos litigation.