Meet Justinian

When Fighting for Justice Becomes Personal

My path to becoming an asbestos attorney wasn't planned. It was written by tragedy, loss, and the gradual revelation of a truth that would reshape everything I thought I knew about my family's history. But perhaps most importantly, it was shaped by an unconventional journey that taught me to see patterns others miss, ask questions others don't think to ask, and build systems that honor the memories of those we've lost.

From Nuclear Testing to Data Centers: An Unexpected Foundation

I dropped out of high school at 17 to work as a contractor at the Department of Energy's nuclear testing facility in Nevada. I ran their data center, managing the computers that tracked some of America's most sensitive nuclear research. After the Nevada assignment, I moved on to Microsoft in Redmond, where I helped run the data centers powering the first online bill payment service. When the dotcom crash hit in the early 2000s, it didn't just end my career. It ended my entire way of life. I lost my job, then my car, then my home. I had gone from having it all in my early twenties to moving back home with no money and no job prospects.

But that technology background would prove invaluable in ways I never imagined. While other lawyers were thinking in terms of file cabinets and paper trails, I was already envisioning databases. When they were conducting the same investigations over and over, I was building systems to capture and leverage every piece of evidence we'd ever found.

From GED to Law Degree: Proving Second Chances Work

Using my GED, I enrolled at Siena Heights University in Michigan, graduating in 2007. From there, I attended Michigan State University College of Law in Lansing, graduating in 2010. Even before passing the bar, I was already thinking about how to make the legal system work better for injured people. I was honored to be published in the July 2006 TRIAL magazine (the official publication of the American Association for Justice) with my article entitled "Corporate Wolves in Victim's Clothing." I had not yet graduated college at the time but the editors liked my argument against tort reform measures that would have made justice even harder for families to achieve.

The Case That Changed Everything

The first law firm that hired me fresh out of law school assigned me to an asbestos case. It was on behalf of a family seeking justice for their father, a pipefitter and instrument technican who had died from mesothelioma after decades of exposure at a petrochemical plant outside Houston. As I dug into the evidence, researching the products that had killed this man, a chilling realization began to take shape.

The same asbestos-containing materials that had claimed my client's life had been stealing members of my own family for decades. I just hadn't known it then.

Roy: The Grandfather Who Made Me Into a "Car Guy"

Some of my most treasured memories are weekend afternoons spent in the garage with my grandfather Roy, a WWII veteran and gifted mechanic who could fix anything with his hands. Even after a stroke affected his speech, he patiently taught me how to do a proper brake job on my old Chevrolet Suburban, guiding my hands with the quiet expertise of someone who had spent a lifetime working with tools.

What I didn't understand then was that Roy had been unknowingly exposed to asbestos for decades. He was exposed through the brake pads and clutches he handled daily, and during his Army service aboard ships lined with asbestos insulation. When I was 19, he was suddenly hospitalized with severe pain and diagnosed with cancer. Three days later, he was gone... before I could even make it home from Microsoft to say goodbye.

At the time, we had no idea asbestos was to blame. Roy was a smoker, and we didn't even consider other causes. Today, I know exactly which companies put those deadly fibers on the ships where he served and in the auto parts he worked with every day. Every time I settle a case involving those same products, I think of Roy and wish we could have fought for him the way I now fight for my clients.

Roy's story taught me that exposure happens in places families never think to look, and that's why I always ask about parents' and grandparents' work history during client interviews.

Terry: The Grandmother Who Brightened Every Christmas

Roy's wife Terry (my maternal grandmother) faced a double exposure that was tragically common for women of her generation. She worked in a Silicon Valley computer chip factory during the 1960s and 70s, operating ovens insulated with asbestos. But perhaps more dangerously, she washed Roy's work clothes each week, never knowing that the dust clinging to his coveralls contained deadly fibers that would settle into her lungs.

When Terry was diagnosed with lung cancer, everyone assumed her smoking habit was to blame; like many women of her era, she was a heavy smoker. So we didn't consider asbestos at all as a cause of her cancer. It wasn't until years later, as I learned more about asbestos exposure, that I understood how these fibers multiply cancer risk in smokers through what medical experts call a "synergistic effect."

Terry's story drives my work with clients who were also smokers. I help them understand that they still deserve justice for asbestos-related illnesses, regardless of their smoking history. Her experience also shaped my understanding of secondary exposure patterns that other firms often miss.

Jerry: The Father Who Taught Me About Integrity

My father Jerry worked in a titanium foundry during the 1950s, surrounded by asbestos-lined equipment that no one warned him about. I never knew the "blue collar" version of my father. By the time I was born he was a white-collar worker. When his cancer diagnosis came decades later, none of us suspected asbestos was to blame. We thought it was just bad luck.

The doctors gave my father 3 months to live, but he stayed with us for almost nine months. That was long enough for him to watch a video of me graduating law school, but he died a few weeks before I got the news that I had passed the bar exam.

Jerry's foundry exposure taught me how industrial workers from the 1950s and 1960s encountered asbestos in ways that aren't obvious today. That knowledge that helps me identify exposure sources other attorneys might miss.

Suzanne: The Mother Who Taught Me To Never Give Up

Growing up, I was always annoyed by the powdery residue that clung to the little blue throw rug in front of our bathroom sink. My mother Suzanne used baby powder daily as part of her routine, never knowing that some brands contained asbestos contamination that would give her ovarian cancer.

But my mother faced a double exposure scenario that we didn't understand until much later. As a child, she had helped wash Roy's asbestos-contaminated work clothes with Terry, creating a multi-generational exposure pattern that connected her illness to her father's work decades earlier.

Unlike the others, my mother's story has a different ending. She survived her battle with cancer and is still part of my life. When I help female clients who've faced similar struggles with talc-related cancers, I think of my mother and feel profound gratitude that her story had a better outcome.

My mother's experience taught me to look for complex, multi-generational exposure patterns that can dramatically increase compensation opportunities for families.

My Own Battle with Cancer

My understanding of what my clients endure became even more personal when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Though my cancer was treatable, I experienced firsthand the crushing fatigue, emotional numbness, and sense of hopelessness that so often accompany a cancer diagnosis. Those dark days gave me a deeper level of empathy for what my clients and their families go through—the physical exhaustion, the emotional toll, the way cancer touches every aspect of life.

That experience made me a better advocate. When I sit across from clients who are struggling with their own diagnoses, I don't just understand their legal needs. I understand their fear, their anger, and their desperate need for someone to fight for their family. And when they have their bad days and their bad moods, I remember how cancer sometimes brought out the worst in me, too.

Building the World's Most Comprehensive Asbestos Archive

My personal losses drive an obsession with preserving evidence and understanding history that goes far beyond typical legal research. I maintain what may be the world's most extensive private collection of asbestos-related artifacts and documents in the world. It's a physical and digital archive that spans over a century of industrial deception.

Historical Artifacts That Tell the Story

My collection includes items that would make museum curators envious: the original hand-drawn blueprints from the Turner & Newall plant where Nellie Kershaw worked (she was the first person known to die of an asbestos-related disease back in 1924), an autographed copy of a book written by famous (in asbestos circles, anyway) Oliver Bowles, with the autograph inscribed to his own father. I even have the crystal doorknob from Johns-Manville attorney Vandiver Brown's house; Vandiver was the attorney who did the most to cover up the health hazards of asbestos. It was a very somber moment to see where he retired as a wealthy man after his service to the asbestos industry; that doorknob is a prized possession.

I own the silver handle from asbestos-heir (his dad was the Manville in Johns-Manville) Tommy Manville's ( walking cane, logbooks from the King Beaver mine in British Columbua, and original burlap bags that once held deadly Jeffrey mine asbestos. In fact, my collection includes raw fiber samples from mines around the world: Jeffrey, Cassiar, Bell's, Uralsbest, and even a 6-inch bundle of amosite from African mines and crocidolite from Australia's notorious Wittenoom mine.

Digital Archive: Several Terabytes of Evidence

Beyond physical artifacts, I maintain several terabytes of digitized asbestos-related files, photographs, and videos. I spend thousands of dollars every month acquiring, scanning, and processing historical documents and records. This isn't just collecting for collecting's sake. It's building a searchable database of evidence that can often prove corporate knowledge and causation in ways that would be impossible without this massive historical foundation.

How This Benefits My Clients

When defense experts claim that "no study ever found" a particular connection, I can often locate multiple studies proving the opposite—sometimes within minutes. When companies try to deny their products were used at specific job sites, I may have the original installation records or corporate correspondence proving otherwise. When families think their exposure was too limited or too long ago to matter, my archive often contains evidence that transforms their case.

This collection is professional and it's personal. Every document I preserve, every artifact I protect, every database I build is a monument to the family members I lost and the clients I fight for today.

Why Personal Experience Creates Professional Advantage

Each family member I lost taught me something specific about asbestos litigation that makes me a better advocate for my clients:

Roy's automotive and military exposure helps me identify exposure sources in those industries that other firms might overlook.

Terry's take-home exposure and smoking history drives my focus on secondary exposure cases and helps me fight the myth that smokers don't deserve justice.

Jerry's foundry work taught me about industrial exposure patterns from the 1950s that aren't obvious to attorneys who've never lived with these stories.

My mother's complex multi-generational exposure helps me identify intricate exposure scenarios that can dramatically increase compensation opportunities.

My own cancer experience gives me genuine empathy for what clients endure and patience for the emotional challenges that come with fighting both disease and legal battles.

Why I'll Fight This Fight for the Rest of My Life

There isn't a day that goes by when I don't think about the family I've lost to asbestos exposure. I miss them during holidays, I missed them while fighting my own cancer, and I see echoes of them in many of my clients' stories. But rather than simply grieving these losses, I've learned to let their memories motivate me.

Every database I build, every document I preserve, every case I win is dedicated to their memory and to the families still fighting today. This work is my calling. Because when I someday join my loved ones, I want them to be proud of the work I did to help families like ours.

The companies that killed my family members are still killing people today. The same corporations that chose profits over human life in the 1950s and 1960s are still fighting to avoid accountability in 2025. But now they're facing someone who understands their history, has preserved their secrets, and won't stop fighting until justice is served.

What This Means for Your Family

When you hire me, you're getting someone who has walked the path you're walking now. Someone who understands the fear, the anger, the overwhelming sense of loss that comes with an asbestos diagnosis. Someone who has spent over a decade building the tools and gathering the evidence needed to hold these companies accountable.

But most importantly, you're getting someone who will never forget that behind every case is a family like mine: Good, hard-working people who deserve better than the companies that killed them ever gave them.