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Mealey's Asbestos

May 22, 2024
Texas Supreme Court Asked To Review Take-Home Asbestosis Causation Case

HOUSTON — Allowing plaintiffs to link de minimis asbestos exposure to a common disease with numerous causes would take Texas back to the chaotic days before precedents established stability for the state, an employer tells the Texas Supreme Court, urging it to review a take-home exposure causation case.
May 22, 2024
J&J Seeks Expedited Responses On Subpoenas To Asbestos-Talc Law Firm

TRENTON, N.J. — Two Johnson & Johnson entities asked the federal court in New Jersey overseeing the talc multidistrict litigation to expedite responses to a subpoena issued to the Beasley Allen Law Firm, saying recent revelations of “egregious behavior” suggest that the firm no longer advocates in the best interests of its clients and uses the media in hopes of sinking a potential global settlement of the asbestos-talc claims.
May 22, 2024
Kentucky High Court Accepts Household Duty, Asbestos Expert Appeals

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky Supreme Court agreed to discretionary review in a pair of cases after a lower court let stand a ruling holding that defendants owed a duty to a household member to prevent asbestos exposure by the late 1960s, that a judge improperly excluded deposition testimony by an expert regarding asbestos in talc and that the state’s workers’ compensation exclusivity provision does not immunize an employer where there is evidence only of a summer’s worth of exposure to dust but not asbestos.
May 21, 2024
La. Panel Affirms Ruling In Asbestos Liability Case Involving Insolvent Insurers

NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana appellate court affirmed a lower court ruling that denied summary judgment to the Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association (LIGA), as statutory obligor for an employer’s insolvent workers’ compensation and liability insurers, in a suit alleging that a former employee’s workplace exposure to asbestos resulted in his diagnosis of mesothelioma, finding that LIGA failed to show “the existence and applicability” of policy exclusions.
May 21, 2024
Plaintiff/Defense Experts Testifying Since Jan. 1, 2002

The following is a listing of plaintiff and defense experts who testified in trials covered by Mealey's Litigation Report: Asbestos since Jan. 1, 2002.
May 17, 2024
Connecticut Asbestos Jury Awards $15M; Vanderbilt Faces Punitive Damages

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Talc company R.T. Vanderbilt Holding Co. Inc. faces a court decision on punitive damages after a Connecticut jury on May 16 found it liable for a man’s mesothelioma and awarded his widow $15 million in compensatory damages. Under Connecticut law the judge determines the punitive damages award.
May 17, 2024
New Jersey Judge Invites Amici In Dispute Over Mesothelioma Genetic Testing

TRENTON, N.J. — A New Jersey judge invited amicus curiae briefs on a motion to compel testing seeking genetic markers for mesothelioma in an asbestos case and laid out the questions she has about how such a process works and its potential impact.
May 17, 2024
Jury Selection, Instruction At Issue After Defense Verdict In Asbestos Case

HONOLULU — A man suffering from mesothelioma and a respirator company handed a defense verdict in 2023 have briefed post-trial motions in a Hawaii court on whether the jury was properly screened and instructed.
May 16, 2024
Australia Justice: Lung Cancer Is Asbestos Related, But Tobacco User Was Negligent

DARWIN, Australia — After finding that a worker’s continued use of tobacco products beyond 1972 when he must have known of their dangers constituted contributory negligence, an Australian justice said the worker’s fatal lung cancer likely arose from asbestos exposures and entered a total judgment of $329,751.87 plus costs to the worker’s family.
May 16, 2024
Parties In Reinsurance Estoppel Row Brief Arbitration Arguments In 7th Circuit

CHICAGO — Parties to reinsurance agreements who disagree on the effects of prior arbitration are wrangling in the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, with the appellee arguing in its response brief that whether estoppel applies to the dispute “is an issue reserved for the arbitrators,” not “a threshold arbitrability question reserved for courts.”
May 15, 2024
Judge: Office Workers Stuck With Workers’ Compensation In Asbestos Suit

SAN DIEGO — The state’s workers’ compensation system is the sole remedy for workers allegedly exposed to asbestos in their office space because while the defendants may have had knowledge that the building contained asbestos requiring abatement, that is not the same level of knowledge required for the fraudulent concealment of injury exception, a California judge said in granting a motion for summary judgment on May 14.
May 14, 2024
Appeals Court Rejects Subpoena, Instruction Challenges To N.Y. Asbestos Verdict

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A trial court did not err in quashing a subpoena seeking corporate testimony about events 50 years prior and for which there appeared to be no such witness or in failing to instruct the jury on an employer’s potential role as an intervening cause of a man’s mesothelioma, a New York appeals court said in affirming a $2 million verdict.
May 14, 2024
Panel Dismisses Appeal: Asbestos Plaintiff Didn’t Adequately Elect Admiralty Law

BOSTON — Nothing required a plaintiff proceeding with both admiralty and traditional asbestos tort claims to expressly invoke maritime law, but the absence of such a statement precludes access to admiralty law’s special procedures for interlocutory appeal, a panel of the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said in an unpublished per curiam opinion.
May 14, 2024
Vermont Court: Last Exposure Triggered Statute Of Repose, Asbestos Case Barred

MONTPELIER, Vt. — The clock on a statute of repose in a take-home exposure mesothelioma case began at a woman’s last exposure, not when she experienced the cellular damage associated with her disease, an outcome that is not unconstitutional, the Vermont Supreme Court said in affirming summary judgment for a pair of companies.
May 13, 2024
Plaintiff Firm Fabricates Asbestos Cases, Company Says In RICO Suit

CHICAGO — Simmons Hanley Conroy LLP crafts asbestos exposure stories involving J-M Manufacturing Company Inc. products through “perjured testimony, falsified sworn statements, untrue discovery responses, asbestos bankruptcy claims that were not disclosed, and sham lawsuits,” the company alleges in a Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit filed May 10 in Illinois federal court.
May 13, 2024
Man Says J&J Entities’ Motion To Strike Asbestos Allegations Misses The Point

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — That various Johnson & Johnson entities underwent a merger in Texas doesn’t change allegations of post-merger conduct elsewhere or alter the Connecticut successor liability analysis, a man tells a judge in Connecticut in objecting to a motion to strike asbestos liability allegations.
May 13, 2024
Cert Denied For Injunction Row In Chapter 11 Case Of Georgia-Pacific Spinoff

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on May 13 denied two petitions for certiorari filed by asbestos claimants’ representatives in the Chapter 11 case of Georgia-Pacific spinoff Bestwall LLC seeking to overturn a bankruptcy injunction barring asbestos personal injury claims against Georgia-Pacific and other nondebtor affiliates.
May 10, 2024
Iowa Court: Premises Owner Owes Duty To Entrant Regardless Of Control Over Work

DES MOINES, Iowa — A land possessor-entrant relationship differs from that of an employer-independent contractor relationship, and lack of control over the work is not dispositive to the question of duty in an asbestos case, an Iowa appeals court said in reversing summary judgment for a premises owner.
May 10, 2024
Judicial Panel Consolidates EPA Asbestos Rule Challenges In 5th Circuit

NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals various challenges to the recent Environmental Protection Agency rule largely banning chrysotile asbestos but providing up to a five-year grace period for certain industries to cease usage.
May 10, 2024
Florida Supreme Court: Spousal Damages Available In Post-Mesothelioma Marriage

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Because a wrongful death claim arises at death, a woman who married her longtime boyfriend after his mesothelioma diagnosis qualifies as a surviving spouse under state law, the Florida Supreme Court said May 9 while recognizing that the outcome could lead to recovery for damages unavailable had the man survived.
May 09, 2024
Wisconsin Court: Punitive Cap Is Double Total Compensatory Asbestos Award

MILWAUKEE — Evidence at trial supported a $26.45 million asbestos verdict and the cap on punitive damages applies to an entire jury award and not just a liable party’s portion of the award, a Wisconsin appeals court found in rejecting an appellant’s challenge to the verdict and partially affirming entry of judgment, saying the resulting award should be $13,419.295.79 against a premises owner defendant.
May 08, 2024
With Asbestos Trial Looming, Parties Argue Maritime Law Before 1st Circuit

BOSTON — Parties to an asbestos case set for jury trial this month argued before the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on May 7, with the plaintiff saying that there is no bar to jurisdiction because the case has always been a maritime case. But the defendant says the plaintiff always sought a jury trial, which is unavailable in maritime cases.
May 08, 2024
Suits Against Asbestos Trust Don’t Challenge Plan Terms, May Proceed, Judge Says

MISSOULA, Mont. — Lawsuits against the W.R. Grace & Co. asbestos trust follow procedures in the plan for such tort actions and are not collateral attacks on the plan procedures themselves, a federal judge in Montana said in a pair of orders rejecting a magistrate judge’s findings and recommendations and denying dismissal.
May 07, 2024
Plaintiff/Defense Experts Testifying Since Jan. 1, 2002

The following is a listing of plaintiff and defense experts who testified in trials covered by Mealey's Litigation Report: Asbestos since Jan. 1, 2002.
May 07, 2024
Asbestos Plaintiff, Talc Defendant Square Off Over Expert Testing

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A mesothelioma plaintiff and an asbestos-talc defendant have briefed a Connecticut judge on whether disclosure of expert William Longo’s testing of additional bottles of talc was untimely or whether the company was properly made aware of development.