52. The Case I Was Meant To Fight

Danielle Ward Mason’s Path to the Law

Tara: Welcome to Hot Docket. I am Tara.

Andrew: I am Andrew.

Danielle Ward Mason: And I am Danielle.

Tara: We are at the Society of Women Trial Lawyers Annual Conference in Destin, Florida. My accent only comes out like that when I am in the South. Thanks for joining us, Danielle.

Danielle Ward Mason: Thank you so much for having me. I am happy to be here.

Tara: Can you give us a little background on why you became a lawyer, your journey, and a little history on your firm?

Danielle Ward Mason: Sure. I did not have a traditional path to the law. I was actually in commercial banking for seven years before going to law school. There is way more to that story than I think we have time for here, but ultimately I started a family pretty young and just felt like there were a number of obstacles and barriers to the traditional path.

But ultimately, I always knew that law was in my heart and in my spirit and in my soul, and I found my way to it eventually. Since then, I have had a really great journey. I have been at a few really great national firms, and I have been very fortunate to elevate in those environments by being named the first Black partner at two of them.

That is really monumental when you think about the underrepresentation of minority lawyers, and particularly female minority lawyers, in the profession. To be able to do that, and also create a path for other female minority lawyers, is something that is really important to me.

Expanding Her Practice in the Southeast

Danielle Ward Mason: That is one of the things I love about Singleton Schreiber, the firm I am with now. I am a partner there. I fairly recently, as of September of last year, opened a Montgomery office for Singleton Schreiber. We also have a Birmingham office that is run by my very good friend Sara Williams.

Tara: We have to get her on the podcast in a couple of months. We had to push it back, but she is going to be here.

Danielle Ward Mason: Yes. I just left her, as a matter of fact. We were at our partner meeting with our other partner, Latisha Johnson, who is the managing partner of our Jackson, Mississippi office. I am just really excited about that expansion of Black women in the Southeast.

It is also allowing me to grow a little bit in my practice, too, because in addition to mass torts, I now get to have a PI practice, which I am really excited about. Mass torts are sexy, but personal injury cases happen every day to our neighbors, to our friends, in our communities. I think it is very important that we also make sure we are taking real stock of the wrongdoing that is happening every day. I really like being able to show up in my community as well.

The Emotional Toll of Long-Running Mass Torts

Andrew: Is there anything on the PI side, in the single-event side, that excites you more than the mass cases?

Danielle Ward Mason: The fact that they start and end at a reasonable time. That has to resonate right at the top, because mass torts can be such a big stage, and they are so impactful, and it really does matter. But anybody who has done this as long as I have, and it has been a while, about 17 years that I have been in the mass tort space, knows that the length of time really takes its toll on you emotionally and physically. The fight goes on so long.

I have been in some of the longest. Talc, for example, is never going to end, I do not think.

Andrew: How many times have they filed? Three?

Danielle Ward Mason: Three times. They are either going to continue that, or my hope is that at some point, when three judges tell you no, that has to resonate. At some point that has to say, okay, maybe we should stop this. I have not gotten any wind that a fourth time is imminent, but honestly, I would not put it past them.

I was in the trenches of the Johnson & Johnson talc litigation when it first started, when it was the big verdicts in St. Louis. I was part of that trial team. You would think that kind of succession of trials, right back to back, with those types of verdicts, would have resolved it a long time ago.

But the fact that Johnson & Johnson continues to double down on a lack of wrongdoing, when quite frankly the science is getting stronger and the liability case is one of the most horrible I have seen in terms of the documents, the admissions, what they knew, and how long ago they knew it, really defies logic. They still will not come to the table and pay these women what they are owed.

The Financial Realities of Mass Tort Litigation

Andrew: Do you think the business strategy on that side is that they know some firms over-leverage and then time erodes them? If you were in Johnson & Johnson’s shoes, what would make you act that way?

Danielle Ward Mason: I cannot say that is not a factor. It is something I think we really need to reconcile with ourselves in the mass tort space. By definition, the way it is set up, it really lacks a lot of equity because of the financial piece. It is expensive, and it is even more expensive the longer it goes.

I cannot say that part of the strategy is not to make it go longer so that folks have to tap out. Then that leaves you with the usual suspects of firms who do have a longer runway to be able to deal with that.

But in the meantime, what you are doing is inviting a space where there are a lot of smaller firms that can get in during the initial frenzy of it all, and ultimately they amass decent enough dockets of cases, which I really hate saying because these are people, but they have enough of these case assets that can be picked off. Then you pick them off at less than what I think the fair market value of that is, and it sort of sets a market value.

That then makes it tougher, because the ones that can stay are going to demand the true value, as they rightfully should. I do think that is a problem, and I do think corporations prey upon that because it is a real problem. Then we are getting called out on it when it comes down to, “Let us figure out who is financing you, for how much, and how much are they dictating the decision-making.” It gets very messy.

Why Some Mass Torts Take Years to Resolve

Andrew: Okay, so my follow-up question is: what is the longest-running mass tort before the first payout ever happened? Not the longest-running case generally, because then you could argue it is something like asbestos, but a case where the defense just kicked the can as long as they possibly could as a strategy. What was the outcome of that, historically?

Danielle Ward Mason: Outside of talc, which at this point has to be right up there in that type of foolishness, I can recall early in my career the very first mass tort I worked on was a drug called Reglan. It was a drug for people who experienced severe gastroesophageal reflux disease, GERD, but it created an involuntary muscle-movement disorder that primarily affected elderly people, young people, and people who are in vulnerable times of development.

That litigation actually went on for about nine or ten years. Partly, though, Reglan was one of the first drugs that really amplified the fact that many of our pharmaceuticals are generics, and that is what most people use. If you are trying to bring what most of these cases are, which is failure to warn, generic companies cannot make changes that the brand has not made, but you cannot go after the brand because product identification, meaning that your client actually took that drug, is a crucial nexus of the case. So there was a real legal barrier to resolving that.

Ultimately, the generic companies came to the table. We all sort of figured it out, and they ended up resolving it. So that was a legal situation that, not in the nefarious way that I think Johnson & Johnson does it, but in a way that necessarily dragged that litigation out because at some point this was just a wrong that needed to be fixed, and the law needed to address it.

The next one I was involved in that went a very long time was hormone replacement therapy. That one was probably about nine to ten years. That one, I do think there was a good bit of corporate shenanigans in terms of just trying to drag it out. There was an MDL. There were state cases. It all came to a head.

I remember being involved in that litigation right when all the judges were remanding cases and they were like, “Everything is going to trial.” So we had deposition on deposition on deposition, and I was just living out of a suitcase.

That litigation went on for quite a while. But in light of very damning documents showing that the drug was causing breast cancer in women, the defendants’ own materials reflected an effort to dismiss and distract from the scientific information. We needed to be telling people this. So I think that was one that went an extremely long time where games were played, but ultimately the courts helped. That created a bottleneck and a pressure point that pushed that to resolution.

But otherwise, talc at this point takes the cake. It is just a real slog, and I honestly do not know what the endgame there is.

The Human Cost of the Talc Litigation

Andrew: Is there anything where that delay is going to make the damages worse, or do you not think that will be the case? Because if it does not, you would think the incentive for Johnson & Johnson is going to be to push everything out.

Danielle Ward Mason: Right. In terms of the damages, one thing they did, which I do think is a win at the end of the day, even though it is not attributed to them simply saying, “Hey, this is a toxic product,” is that it is not sold in the United States anymore. So when we think long term in terms of new babies and new young women, now there is not that option. So that is great.

But the downside here in a case like this is that ovarian cancer is one of the most deadly. So as all of these games are being played, women are dying at very rapid rates.

I personally had to seek therapy because of the number of women we had to designate as in extremis. Once their cases were filed, their health often declined rapidly. We would have to go and get life-expectancy letters from their physicians. We would start looking at women with less than 12 months to live, and in some cases less than three.

It was my job to go around and preserve these women’s testimony because this is not a pharmaceutical. This is not something where we could just go get a printout of a receipt or a pharmacy profile. What she says about what she used, how she used it, and the frequency of that use really has to be told from her mouth.

It was one of the hardest things for me as a lawyer, understanding that we need this for your case, but also feeling like, you are literally on your deathbed and I am putting you through something very difficult right now. That was really tough. I did hundreds of those.

Host: I cannot imagine the docket you had.

Danielle Ward Mason: No, it was insane. I did hundreds of them. The heartbreaking part is the bond that we would create getting ready for that. It was fast, but deep and very profound. It was almost like that was the one thing that they just needed to do. They would get that out, and then it would just be maybe a week, two weeks, and we would get the call that she had passed away.

The last one that I did, she passed away an hour after her deposition was over. So, very emotionally damaging stuff, to them, to their families, and to what their last days needed to be like.

When you really think about this litigation, that is what I think about. It is not the $72 million verdicts and all of that that I was part of. What I think about is the number of women who are dying, and they are still trying to deny their involvement in that.

Leading the Hair Relaxer Litigation

Host: It is terrible. So now I am channeling all of that anger toward the manufacturers and the hair-relaxer litigation. Do you want to walk us through that case a little bit?

Danielle Ward Mason: I would love to. I am leading hair-relaxer litigation in multiple state courts. The MDL, of course, is established in the Northern District of Illinois. I was the first to file state court cases in Georgia and in Cook County, Illinois, and right now our firm is still the only firm to have a case filed in Alameda County, California.

I am looking at some other options. I do know there is state litigation going on in Philadelphia. I am actually about to put some cases there. Ultimately, we are gearing up now for the first trials that will take place at the end of this year.

Cook County will have the first multi-plaintiff trial in hair relaxer. We have four plaintiffs. Two of them are represented by my firm, Singleton Schreiber. The other two are represented by Keller Postman. So we will be trying that case together starting November 2, and I am very excited about this opportunity.

Why the Hair Relaxer Cases Are Personal

Danielle Ward Mason: This litigation is extremely personal to me, just from my own experience with it. I started using hair relaxer when I was about eight years old. This was a decision that my mother and I were very much aligned on. I have gotten older now and my hair has thinned out, but when I was a child I had very thick, bushy hair, and I was also a very active young girl. I liked to swim. I was on the little peewee cheerleading squad. I was always running outside. I was kind of a tomboy a little bit. So I was always running outside and always sweating it out.

My mother was like, “I do not have three hours to sit here and do your hair.” So hair relaxer was just a thing you did. It certainly was a thing you did when you were a child. There was so much about how they marketed it, and particularly with products like Just for Me, that were supposed to be milder and gentler for children.

As we are going through this litigation and going through discovery, we are learning that not only is it not milder or gentler, but in some respects it actually has more toxicity than the adult products. Literally, this is something that is just not known.

Andrew: Why is that?

Danielle Ward Mason: That is a great question, and I am really looking forward to this litigation putting that front and center and answering that for people. There were always certain things that we were willing to accept. It is a harsh process. To fully and permanently relax ethnic hair, it does have to be a strong chemical process. There is some part of that you can understand.

There is some part of that we understood in terms of scalp burns. So many of us, me included, would experience that. But it was like, you remember the product Noxzema back in the day? Everybody loved Noxzema. It had that little tingle. So this whole thing was, “Well, if it is tingling, it is working.” It was one of those things that I do not think we ever registered as, okay, this is temporary, this is uncomfortable, but when is it not? When is it ever comfortable to be a woman?

From the shoes we wear to waxing to all of the things that we do to fit whatever society says we need to look like and be, there are certain parts of that we accept.

In this situation, though, it is an exposure that, unlike really any other sort of elective thing, reaches 90-plus percent of the Black female population and has done so for generations. So this is a long-standing systemic issue that is rooted in a lot of things. It can be about saving time and all of that, but there is also this other component of acceptability and professionalism and what it means to look the part, to be in certain circles and in certain environments. That was part of what they really capitalized on and targeted.

Through all of this, what we are finding, and what this population of women is dealing with, is nothing short of sterilization. It complicates women’s reproductive choices. I personally experienced that through my own reproductive health issues.

I started using hair relaxer at eight. I was diagnosed with this condition at 12. You do not hear about this condition from most people who talk about the injuries related to relaxer. I happen to be one who is pursuing more comprehensive reproductive toxicity than just uterine cancer or ovarian cancer. I am looking at fibroids. I am looking at endometriosis. I consider fertility issues, miscarriages, and all of that as being part of the damages that go along with what these women are dealing with.

The Work Danielle Feels Called to Do

Danielle Ward Mason: It is something that I personally know well. By the time I was 37, I had to have a hysterectomy. That is a very tough decision, even if you are consciously saying, “I do not think I want any more children at this point.” The finality of that choice is one that is very complicated and sits with some women way longer than they even anticipate.

So this matters to me, again, because it is something that I can personally identify with, but it also is just an amazing opportunity, as a Black woman in the law, to be able to lead something like this for women who look like me and who have gone through what I have gone through.

I do not know if I could write my own legal story any better to describe the honor that it is to be able to do this on their behalf. It really does mean everything. Sometimes when I think about why I wanted to be a lawyer, I probably did not know it then, but I look at this moment and I think, this is why. I think this is what I was meant to do.

Host: Yes. It is like your whole life was leading up to it. It is literally movie-quality. It is incredibly moving.

Danielle Ward Mason: Well, I love that. This way, we can use some of this footage for the documentary, because I am terrible at documenting half the stuff I am doing these days. But I do think the story will be told here. It is not for me to be at the center of it, but certainly it is something that I think is one of the most culturally significant mass torts of our time.

Host: Yes, I agree. What a great final interview that we are doing here at SWTL. It is super inspiring. Danielle, I have known you for a while and looked up to you, but thank you for sharing that personal component.

Danielle Ward Mason: Thank you. Thank you for hearing it and being willing to hear it.

Connecting With Danielle Ward Mason

Tara: If other lawyers want to reach out to you, refer cases to you, and all of that, where can they best find you?

Danielle Ward Mason: You can best find me through Singleton Schreiber. I look forward to working with anyone who feels the same way I do: where the injustice is, we go meet it. If that is how you feel, I would like to work with you.

Tara: She is also super active on her social media. She will drop down in there, I promise you, because I be following.

Danielle Ward Mason: All of my social media is my name. It is not something weird. Literally, if you search it, you should find me. I love to engage there as well.

Tara: She likes, hearts, and responds back, so I am sure you are going to get a lot of people reaching out. It is a really incredible story and journey.

Okay, Danielle, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. I know we have a lot of relaxing and hanging out with our fellow women trial lawyers here, but thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Danielle Ward Mason: I was so glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me.