Kim Madril – Mesothelioma Testimonial

I grew up in Los Angeles, in Baldwin Hills, and spent my elementary days there. I ended up in junior high school in Gardena. So in junior high school, I took art class, and we did things with different mediums, drawing, painting, ceramics. I did that for a year and a half. I also went into auto shop when I went into high school.

There, we were exposed to asbestos in the brake linings and the dust in the class from the grinding of the brakes. For me, I was lucky that I was diagnosed early on, and it was just by chance because I had pain in my back. They kept saying that it was maybe a kidney stone or that I had lifted something heavy. After a year of pain, my primary care provider said, “Hey, let’s just get a CAT scan and see what’s going on.” And they found a nodule. They said, “You’re fine. You’re young.

There’s no way you could possibly have mesothelioma” I found a physician on the East Coast, and he ran his own tests. At the end of it, he said I had mesothelioma. He knew my story. He knew what problems I had with the medical insurance, and he said, “I really think you’re going to probably need some compensation because you won’t be able to pay for the surgery and the treatment.” Then I called Meirowitz & Wasserberg. They picked up immediately.

I spoke with them, and Daniel said to me, “I will do my best for you. I’ll treat you like family.” I felt that he was very genuine. I knew how important it was. She had two minor kids. She had a husband. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her case. We didn’t know how she was exposed to asbestos in the beginning. We started to figure it out. We went through those high school yearbooks, and we saw—okay, the kids in the shop class at San Pedro High School were using asbestos in shop class in the late ’70s. We filed the case, and we were able to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District.

LAUSD became the target because we found out that they knew about the hazards of asbestos and they allowed the students to work with asbestos, and Kim was sick from that. We got her $5 million because she trusted us. She worked with us. We poured our heart and soul into the case. It wasn’t only me. I had a whole team of people.

I think what differentiates our firm from the competition is that we’re sort of in that middle, that sweet spot. Our firm isn’t so big that clients feel like they’re a number and they don’t get personalized attention, but it’s big enough to where we have the resources to be able to do all the things that a big firm does. We can hire the best experts.

We can take on the biggest companies. And we can see a case all the way through trial. Meirowitz & Wasserberg really saved my life emotionally and mentally—not only because of the support that I received. They were able to get for me more than I ever expected. They secured a future for my children, and I wouldn’t have had that. They wouldn’t have had it. So, I had that knowledge that they would be taken care of. And so, really, they gave me the greatest gift.