Products Liability Law Reporter

Everson v. Lone Star Indus. Inc., No. 19-2-02-422-4 SEA (Wash. Super. Ct. King Cnty. Sept. 14, 2019).

Douglas Everson worked as a marine electrician in the early 1970s. For two years, he worked at the Lockheed Shipyard near where insulators were using asbestos-containing products, including cement. While working with these asbestos-containing materials, workers released dust into Everson’s work area. At age 80, Everson was diagnosed as having malignant mesothelioma. Despite chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatment, his condition is terminal.

Everson and his wife sued Lone Star Industries Inc., among others, alleging negligence and strict liability. The plaintiffs charged that the defendant’s predecessor, Pioneer Sand & Gravel, supplied asbestos-containing, defective products to Lockheed Shipyard and failed to warn workers of the dangers.

The jury awarded $4.25 million, including $2.75 million to Everson’s wife.

Plaintiff counsel: AAJ members Chandler H. Udo, Vanessa Oslund, Glen Draper, and Brendan Little, all of Seattle.

Comment: In Richards v. Copes-Vulcan, Inc., 213 A.3d 1196 (Del. 2019), Craig Richards and his wife sued several manufacturers of asbestos-containing products, alleging that Richards’s asbestos exposure at home and at various jobs—including during his employment as a millwright in a Ford manufacturing facility and as a mechanic—led to his mesothelioma. The plaintiffs served an expert report espousing a cumulative exposure theory but did not offer medical evidence of specific causation. The trial court granted summary judgment for the defense. Affirming, the state high court noted that under Ohio law, which the parties agree is applicable here, a plaintiff in a toxic tort case must offer expert medical evidence showing that the toxin at issue is capable of causing the claimed medical condition and that the toxin in fact led to the plaintiff’s medical condition. Here, the court said, summary judgment was proper based on the plaintiffs’ failure to offer expert medical evidence on specific causation. To have avoided summary judgment, the plaintiffs were required to show that asbestos exposure attributable to each defendant caused Richards’s mesothelioma, the court said.