King County's Largest Asbestos Verdict: $16.67 Million for Camas Paper Mill Worker's Family

Kevan Holdsworth spent nearly four decades at a paper mill in Camas, Washington, starting in 1964. From 1970 to 1976 he worked on the plant's paper machine clean-up crew, using compressed air to blow dust off the dryer felts that kept the paper moving through the machines. Those felts, manufactured and sold by Scapa Waycross Inc., contained asbestos. The dust he dislodged with every cleaning shift carried asbestos fibers he could not see.

Holdsworth was diagnosed with mesothelioma in December 2018. He died in 2019. His widow, Sherrie Holdsworth, brought suit against Scapa Waycross in King County Superior Court, represented by Luke Garrett and Thomas Breen of Schroeter Goldmark and Bender.

At trial, Garrett and Breen established that Scapa continued selling asbestos-containing dryer felts to the Camas mill through the late 1970s, long after safer alternatives existed. Expert testimony showed that the fiber releases from the blow-down work Holdsworth performed on those felts were a substantial contributing factor in his development of mesothelioma. Scapa declined to settle.

On June 15, 2021, the jury returned a verdict of $16,674,097.49 in Sherrie Holdsworth's favor. It was the largest asbestos verdict ever tried in King County and the second largest in Washington state history at the time.

Scapa Waycross appealed. On March 13, 2023, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division I (docket No. 83564-5) affirmed the judgment in full. The appellate court found that Holdsworth had presented sufficient evidence to establish both exposure to Scapa's product and causation, and it let the damages stand without reduction.