Over more than 35 years, Mark has taken on some of the most difficult legal challenges and won some of the largest verdicts in U.S. history. His cases have confronted the harm caused by mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, dangerous drugs, defective medical devices, addictive social media, and other dangerous consumer products and services. His work has helped to protect the public and has led to changes in how companies conduct themselves. He’s also prevailed in significant and important business disputes involving fraud, breach of contract, and other commercial matters. Cumulatively, his trial work now exceeds $20 billion in verdicts.
What sets Mark apart is not only the size of the verdicts and settlements but also how he reaches them. He takes his clients’ story and makes a jury feel its weight, then uses that verdict to achieve appropriate justice. He prepares exhaustively and adopts new tools when they help, including artificial intelligence, yet he still tries every case the way he always has, by telling the truth plainly and trusting a jury to do what is right.
Mark is also widely regarded as one of the most persuasive courtroom advocates of his generation, known for distilling complex scientific and technical cases into clear, compelling narratives that resonate with juries. Speaking in plain language and without notes, he builds each case around a simple theme and reinforces it with vivid demonstratives, examples and props taken from everyday life, and carefully designed visual presentations that make difficult evidence easy for jurors to follow and understand. He shares this unique talent widely. Mark headlines his own Lanier Trial Academy each summer for more than 1,000 plaintiffs’ lawyers, and in 2025 he delivered the inaugural lecture in Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s Anatomy of a Trial series on trial strategy, persuasion, and storytelling.
Most recently, Mark led a trial team that secured a jury verdict totaling $6 million in compensatory and punitive damages for an individual plaintiff against Meta and Google’s YouTube in a landmark trial on the role of addictive social media platform features in harming mental health.
Mark has also become a prominent voice on the use of artificial intelligence in trial practice. In the social media addiction trial, he drew on a collaborative AI platform that integrates multiple large language models to help build and pressure-test his case strategy, an approach that drew wide attention in the legal and technology press. He also teaches the practical and ethical use of AI in litigation, from case development through trial, as part of the Lanier Trial Academy curriculum.
Mark’s success in the courtroom and perspectives on litigation have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Bloomberg News, and the Houston Chronicle, among many other publications. He is also a frequent guest on news and business programs for a wide range of broadcast and cable networks, including CNBC, Fox News, CNN and Fox Business.
Mark Lanier in the Media
Personal Background
A devout Christian, Mark is also the founder of the Lanier Theological Library, one of the nation’s largest private theological collections. He teaches a weekly, 750-plus-member Sunday school class focusing on Biblical literacy at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston. He is a prolific author as well. His works examining faith include Christianity on Trial (IVP, 2014), Atheism on Trial (IVP, 2022), and Religions on Trial (IVP, 2023), along with a series of daily devotionals from Baylor University Press: Psalms for Living (2016), which received the 2018 Illumination Book Award in the Devotional category, Torah for Living (2018), Minor Prophets for Living (2024), and New Testament Letters for Living (2024). He has also authored the legal practice text Lanier’s Texas Personal Injury Forms.
Mark considers his greatest achievement to be his family. He is the father of five wonderful children and lives in Houston with his wife, Becky.
Books
Representative Cases
- 2026 – A $6 million verdict against Meta and Google’s YouTube in the first social media addiction lawsuit trial in the nation, holding the platforms liable for addictive design features that harmed a young user’s mental health.
- 2024 – $8 million verdict from a jury that unanimously determined that exposure to asbestos from the BNSF Railyard in Libby, Montana was a contributing factor in the deaths of our clients who tragically succumbed to mesothelioma. This verdict represents the first successful community exposure case against BNSF Railway in relation to asbestos-related illnesses.
- 2021 – 2022 – Led the national trial team that secured a historic $650.6 million jury verdict against retail pharmacies operated by Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens. The jury affirmed that the pharmacies had failed to follow guidelines that would have curtailed the staggering distribution of highly addictive opioid painkillers. This was followed by another historic $1.85 billion settlement reached in Texas, with opioid manufacturers and distributors and was preceded by a $260 million settlement with opioid distributors AmeriSource Bergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., McKesson Corp., and Teva on behalf of two other Ohio counties on similar claims.
- 2018 – A record setting $4.69 billion verdict on behalf of 22 women and their families who alleged that decades of daily use of Johnson & Johnson’s asbestos-laden talcum powder products caused their ovarian cancer. This verdict was named National Law Journal’s Top Verdict of 2018. Johnson & Johnson took the verdict to the United States Supreme Court. On June 1st, 2021, the court rejected the J&J appeal in a brief written order, effectively ending the case and leaving in place a Missouri appeals-court ruling against the company.
- 2017 – $247 million verdict against DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. and health care giant Johnson & Johnson.
- 2016 – $528 million verdict against DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. and health care giant Johnson & Johnson, recognized by the National Law Journal as the Outstanding Medical Device Award for 2016, and as one of the Top 50 Verdicts of the Year.
- 2016 – $1.05 billion verdict against DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. and health care giant Johnson & Johnson, the fourth largest verdict in America in 2016.
- 2014 – A class-action settlement on behalf of Missouri gun owners against Remington Arms Co. and its corporate parent, DuPont, over a trigger defect in Remington Model 700 rifles that could fire without the trigger being pulled.
- 2014 – $9 billion Actos verdict against Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and Eli Lilly & Co.
- 2013 – A wide-ranging wrongful-death settlement for the family of a former University of Mississippi student-athlete against the university and the NCAA, after which the NCAA agreed to update its guidance for member schools on athletes with the sickle cell trait.
- 2010 – A $54.2 million verdict in San Antonio against Caterpillar Inc. and Holt Texas Ltd. after a jury found that defects and lax maintenance of construction equipment left a North Texas worker paralyzed at a job site.
- 2007 – A $6.5 million verdict for an oilfield worker who sustained life-altering injuries when struck by a falling pipe, after a jury found two West Texas drilling companies negligent.
- 2005 – $253 million in the first Vioxx® verdict in the U.S. (Ernst v. Merck).
- 2000 – Reversal of $1.6 billion judgment (Owens-Illinois v. T&N, Ltd., and Federal Mogul).
- 1998 – 118 million in an asbestos-related legal matter (Aaron v. Carborundum).
- 1993 – $417 million in a business fraud case against Amoco (Rubicon v. Amoco).
Notable Mentions
Community and Professional Activities
In addition to those he represents, Mark has committed himself to helping others in the law profession. He regularly appears at seminars and legal education events and serves as a featured lecturer at many of the nation’s top law schools, including Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Pepperdine University School of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and Texas Tech University School of Law.
Executives and administrators from major American corporations and institutions often call on Mark for his respected views on national and international issues. In 2011, Mark received the distinguished Ambassador of Peace Award from the Guatemalan government for his work with Guatemala SANA, a nonprofit organization that Mark founded in 2009 to help bring health care, education, and infrastructure development to rural areas of Guatemala. Mark also serves on the boards of the American Schools of Oriental Research and The Albright Institute, as well as on the Lipscomb University Board of Trustees. He also serves on the Texas Tech University School of Law Foundation Board and as a director on the Board of the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation, appointed by the Harris County Commissioners Court.