Ever since she graduated from Fordham Law, Brittany Russell ’13 has been fighting for mesothelioma patients who have been exposed to asbestos.
Working for Weitz & Luxenberg as an associate attorney, Russell has secured justice—and millions of dollars in damages—for several clients, but her most recent victory on behalf of a sheet metal worker exposed to the cancer-causing building material, has set a new record in New York state history: a $117 million verdict for a single-plaintiff asbestos claim.
“There’s no safe level of exposure to asbestos, and this exposure is probably the biggest exposure my client had in his life,” said Russell. “There’s no other cause of mesothelioma—it’s a man-made cancer.”
Her client was a sheet metal worker, hired to install air ducts in the original World Trade Center building in the 1970s. According to Russell, shortly before he was hired, the New York City Environmental Protection Agency passed regulations requiring extensive safety precautions to be taken if anyone is going to spray asbestos. On the first five days that those regulations were in effect, Mario & Di Bono at the World Trade Center received five criminal court summonses for spraying asbestos-containing fireproofing materials without the proper protection. The contractor continued to use this substance without notifying their workers, said Russell, including her client, who was heavily exposed while working on the building.
Russell argued that her client had suffered irreparable damage from this exposure to asbestos—and that Mario & DiBono was aware of the dangers of using such a product. After three years of cancer treatment, the client’s mesothelioma diagnosis is terminal.
The jury unanimously concluded that Russell’s client should be fairly compensated with $117 million.
This isn’t Russell’s first multi-million verdict on behalf of her clients. Her first victory was only a few years after her graduation from Fordham, winning a $4 million verdict in 2015 on behalf of an upstate New York plant worker who suffered from mesothelioma and lung cancer as a result of asbestos exposure.
From there, she earned a verdict for $3.2 million in Schenectady, New York in 2016, a verdict for $13.6 million in Suffolk County, New York in 2017, a verdict for $23 million in Chicago, Illinois in 2021, and finally a $23 million verdict in Manhattan, New York in 2022.
During her time at Fordham Law, Russell was an active member of the Brendan Moore Advocacy Trial Center, which fields teams that compete nationally in trial competitions. She attributes her success as an advocate for mesothelioma patients to her training at the Center, now in its 30th year, and the mentorship of Center Director Adam Shlahet ’02 and all of her coaches, including Jeff Briem ’05, Stacy Cheser ’05, and Greg Sangermano ‘02.
Since she graduated, she has given back to the Law School by serving as a coach for multiple competition teams at Fordham Law.
“Some of the Moores that I coached have actually become coaches too,” said Russell. “Coaching also makes me a better lawyer, because I have to articulate why something is effective or not effective, and hopefully it makes the students better lawyers too.”
In fact, Russell says the Moore Advocacy team gave her even more than her litigation skills—Tom Moore ’72 and his wife and law partner Judy Livingston, who founded the center, gave Russell an internship at their firm Kramer Dillof Livingston & Moore during her last year of law school.
Her experience on the Moore team also gave Russell her family—her trial partner, Graham Amodeo ’13, became her husband, and the two Fordham Law grads recently had their first baby.
During the jury deliberation for her record-breaking case, Russell ran into Moore and Livingston at lunch and told them about the case. Later that day after the jury returned its verdict, she excitedly shared the good news with them via a FaceTime call.
“Tom and Judy have been one of the biggest blessings of my life because they created this program that taught me how to be a lawyer where I met my husband, and they gave me a start in a legal career by giving me an internship,” says Russell. “Every part of my life would be different if it weren’t for Tom and Judy.”