Sam Iola

I’ve known I wanted to be a lawyer since I was a kid growing up in Oklahoma. I moved to Dallas when I was 13 and have lived in Dallas ever since, except for time spent in college in California.

I come from a family of attorneys and teachers. For decades, my mom was a speech pathologist helping kids in elementary school. She is the kindest and most empathetic person that I know. My father, uncles, and stepmom have been attorneys representing victims of asbestos exposure since the 1980s. I went to law school knowing exactly what I wanted to do: represent people harmed by corporate negligence and hold those corporations accountable for their greed. This has continued to be the exclusive focus of my legal career to the present day.

My dad told me early on that law school teaches you how to think like an attorney but doesn’t teach you how to be a counselor. That part of my job, counseling families, is the most rewarding work I’ll ever do. I am thankful that I was blessed with my mom’s empathy and kindness and my dad’s tenacity and singular focus to find the truth and help juries understand right and wrong.

In this country, there is no corporate police. No federal or state agency protects us from corporations when they decide to sell a product, knowing that it is dangerous, and decide for all of us consumers that we must absorb that risk just by using the product. Policing corporate greed is my work and the work of this great law firm. From the beginning of a case to verdicts in courtrooms across the country, my life’s work is trying to help provide some sense of justice to my clients during the most difficult time of their life. I can’t imagine using my law degree in any other way.

University of Redlands, 2010

Texas A&M School of Law, 2015

Texas, 2015

California, 2021

American Association for Justice

Texas Trial Lawyers Association

Super Lawyers, Texas Rising Star, 2017-2023

Peckham vs. DAP and RT Vanderbilt, Connecticut, 2023. A 10-week trial in Connecticut state Court on behalf of a mesothelioma victim and his surviving spouse against a product manufacturer and a talc supplier that resulted in the largest ever asbestos verdict in the State of Connecticut.

Vanni v. Honeywell, California, 2019. A 3-week trial in Los Angeles state Court on behalf of a mesothelioma victim and his surviving spouse against a supplier of asbestos brake dust to a bowling ball manufacturer that used asbestos in the core of bowling balls in the 1970’s. The trial resulted in a multimillion-dollar Plaintiffs’ verdict that was affirmed on appeal. This was the first bowling ball related asbestos verdict in the country, and one of the very few asbestos verdicts involving a diagnosis of pericardial mesothelioma.

Multiple favorable trial verdicts in other jurisdictions including Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California.

Presentation: Defense Expert Witnesses: separating fact from fiction, 2019

Presentation: How to try a DAP and RT Vanderbilt case, 2023

Appears in HBO Max Documentary, “Not So Pretty”, in Episode 1 discussing talcum powder, 2022