Meet Partner Lawrence K. Holcomb
Lawrence K. Holcomb has worked in asbestos litigation for more than a decade. With the rest of the asbestos team at Wallace Miller, he fights tirelessly to make sure his clients and their families receive the resources they need.
How did you get into asbestos law?
When I got out of law school, I thought I wanted to do tax law, so I was going to the University of Florida to get my advanced degree. I had a friend reach out and say, ‘Hey, I know somebody that’s got an opening in an asbestos firm.’ I had no background in asbestos, but I jumped right in and read the entire asbestos textbook in my first month there.
I was very fortunate that I got a lot of hands-on training and experience my first year and really enjoyed it. I loved working with the clients and hearing their stories, which was what I was getting to do a lot—signing up clients and taking depositions. I got to see why what I was doing was important. That really informed why I stayed, why I’m still doing asbestos work, and why I’m so passionate about it.
When did you first think to yourself, this work is really making a difference?
One of the first mesothelioma victims I worked with was a lovely man in Michigan who was homeless when he was assigned to me. His wife had died the year before of cancer, and they were older and didn’t have good insurance, and they had spent all their savings on her cancer treatment.
They didn’t have family in the area, but he couch-surfed among friends when he could, and then he got diagnosed with mesothelioma. I was able to fast-track some bankruptcy settlement money to him and help him get an apartment and a nurse that could stay with him.
That’s when it clicked for me just how important what I was doing was, and how big of an impact this area of law would allow me to have on people’s lives. He was able to live out his days with dignity because of the money we were able to get him. He was able to die comfortably, and he didn’t have to worry about anything.
Then his sister who was in Indiana, his last living family member, was able to step in, and because of this lawsuit her daughter was able to go to college free and clear. And I remember feeling so fulfilled and so thankful at the end of the case that I was able to work with that family and was able to help them. To this day I still have a voicemail from him on my phone that I refuse to delete, because he has such a special place in my heart.
How did you choose asbestos law specifically?
I had a background of knowledge in it, because my family owned an asbestos abatement company. I grew up hearing about it at the dinner table and went on some of the jobs. That’s part of what I did for work [before] starting law school—I worked for my parents and ran some projects from Kansas to Puerto Rico. And it happened that when I was graduating, there was a posting locally for an asbestos attorney, and I said, “Well, that’s perfect.”
I also gravitated towards asbestos because you get to work with individual people who were really harmed by these companies, instead of some areas of law, where it’s just one big commercial company versus another.
What does asbestos abatement mean?
Removing asbestos from buildings. Asbestos was installed everywhere up through the early ‘70s at least, and it didn’t just disappear once it was banned. There were still probably trillions of tons of asbestos in buildings and schools and whatnot. So we would go in and take it out so that it wouldn’t continue to hurt people. That’s legally required—even if the building is falling apart or you’re going to demolish a building, you’ve got to safely remove the asbestos first. The job was a lot of learning where asbestos is and trying to stop it from hurting people in the future.
Tell me about a moment in your legal work when you thought, “I’m really making a difference.”
Early in my career, I was working with a client in upstate New York who had been an intelligence officer for the Army. He developed a counter-IED program in Iraq and saved a bunch of soldiers from losing limbs or losing their lives.
He’d retired by this point, but he was renovating an old Army barracks into a brewery and lodge. And he was diagnosed with mesothelioma in the middle of the massive renovation.
So, they were trying to renovate this barracks and his getting sick really posed a huge challenge to its completion. Sadly, he did not live to see the bar complete and open, but he lived long enough to see his lawsuit guarantee that there would be enough funding for the project to be seen through by his wife.
Being able to help someone like that—it meant a lot to me. All the military folks I work with do. There are tons of people that over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to represent that have really left a mark on me. He was the first one, I think, who died while I was representing him, and the responsibility I felt towards his family, and do to the family of every deceased client, is hard to put into words.
How do you handle working on cases with people who have serious diagnoses?
From an emotional standpoint, it’s really tough. The comfort is knowing that I’m able to tell them before they pass, “Your family will be taken care of.”
There was one guy I represented in Georgia who told me, “Man, I know I’m going to die soon and that’s okay. I know that you’re going to take care of my wife and that gives me the peace I need to be able to die and not be worried.” He sadly did pass away a few months later, but we were able to recover millions for his widow. Money can never fight a disease, or heal the pain of losing a loved one, but it does make the other parts of my clients’ lives easier.
I mostly work with men in their 70s and 80s. In their generation, they were responsible for taking care of their wives and families and that’s what they believe. To be able to take the financial burden off of them so that they can fight their disease, or even pass with a little bit more peace—that gives me enough solace to where when they do pass, I can say, “It’s okay, I’ve got to fulfill my responsibility now and make sure this family is taken care of.’”
What do people misunderstand about the work that lawyers do?
A lot of people think they’re just going to be a number or another file when they come to us, and that’s not the case. I work hard to stay in communication with my clients and get back to them quickly. Accessibility means a lot to me because I know it means a lot to my clients. Every client has my direct number.
What do people need to know about asbestos cases?
Everyone needs to know that we’ll help them figure it out. When they come to us initially, they don’t always know exactly how they were exposed or what they were exposed to, so they might not be sure if they have a claim.
What they need to know is that we’re professionals and are trained to help them identify their exposures. They often remember working with various products, but didn’t know they contained asbestos. They have a partner in us, and we’re going to combine our knowledge with their knowledge to figure out how to make their lives better. They don’t have to have all the dots connected before coming to us.
Read more about Lawrence in his bio.
