Winning a $1 billion jury verdict against a major company would be the pinnacle of most lawyers’ careers. W. Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm in Houston—whose biggest trial win clocked in at a whopping $9 billion—isn’t most lawyers.

Lanier notched his latest billion-dollar victory last week, when a jury in Dallas awarded $1.04 billion to six plaintiffs from California who challenged the safety of a hip implant made by Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. unit.