W. Mark Lanier

William Mark Lanier (born October 20, 1960) is an American trial lawyer and founder and CEO of the Lanier Law Firm. He has led a number of high profile product litigation suits resulting in billions of dollars in damages, including Johnson & Johnson baby powder and Merck & Co.'s Vioxx drug.
Legal career.
After graduating from Texas Tech University School of Law in 1984, Lanier began his legal career working in Houston for Fulbright & Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright), working in the appellate and trial divisions. In 1990, Lanier founded The Lanier Law Firm.
Verdicts have included billions of dollars in damages concerning business fraud, asbestos, and other product-use related lawsuits. In cases about Vioxx, hip replacements and talcum powder he has faced John Beisner as an opponent lawyer.
In 2004 Lanier founded the Christian Trial Lawyers Association. 
Vioxx litigation.
In 2005, Lanier represented Carol Ernst in a lawsuit against Merck & Co., a pharmaceutical company and manufacturer of Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat osteoarthritis and acute pain conditions. Ernst was married to Robert Ernst, a former marathon runner who died after taking the medication. The case was initially decided in Ernst's favor, with a jury awarding her a $253 million verdict. In another case Lanier obtained consumer fraud findings against Merck who it was claimed had misled doctors and patients by concealing information about Vioxx and its risks. The first ruling was overturned on appeal in 2008 with the court noting Lanier "had not proved that Vioxx caused Mr. Ernst’s death" and compensatory damages were reduced in the second. 
Artificial hip litigation.
Following the 2010 DePuy Hip Recall, Lanier represented plaintiffs in several lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and DePuy Synthes, which Johnson & Johnson acquired in 1998. In March 2016, five North Texas residents being represented by Lanier were awarded about $500 million for alleged complications arising from the hip implants. The award was later reduced to $151 million at appeal. In November 2016, Lanier won a $1 billion payout to six plaintiffs affected by the implants, followed by a further $247 million to six New York residents.
In April 2018 a retrial was ordered by the 5th Circuit court of appeals in the case against DePuy Orthopaedics, with the appeal judges accusing Lanier of "inflammatory tactics and outright deception" in the trial. Reuters reported that the ruling had a "truly extraordinary tone" when criticising Lanier's actions at the trial. Lanier had told jurors that in contrast to DePuy’s expert witnesses in the case, his expert witnesses were unpaid when in fact they were compensated $65,000 after the trial. Lanier also insinuated that DePuy were liable because they had been accused of bribing officials during from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and claimed that executives at DePuy were racist. The retrial began in January 2019 and in May that year Reuters reported that Johnson & Johnson had reached an agreement to settle 95% of the 6,000 cases for a $1bn.
Johnson & Johnson talc litigation.
In 2018, Lanier led the trial team representing 22 women who had filed suit against Johnson & Johnson. The lawsuit alleged that the company's talcum powder products contained asbestos and that, after several years of use, had caused each of the women's ovarian cancer. The trial lasted six weeks and resulted in $550 million in compensatory damages and $4.14 billion in punitive damages being awarded to the plaintiffs.
Personal life.
Lanier was born in 1960 in Lubbock, Texas to a railroad salesman and housewife. As of 2005, he was married with five children.
His brother-in-law is former Texas state representative Kevin Roberts, who ran against Dan Crenshaw in the 2018 Republican primary to replace retiring Congressman Ted Poe. During the campaign, Lanier funded a super PAC which ran ads against Crenshaw.
Lanier appears as a character with the same name in the 2011 film "Puncture".