May 12, 2014 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - A settlement has been reached in a suit filed by Rosemary T. Checho, widow of Thomas N. Checho, a mesothelioma victim who passed away in September, 2012. Mrs. Checho alleged that her husband contracted mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos during his 35-year career as an operator of hot metal typesetting machines. The matter was settled for an undisclosed amount after the plaintiff’s attorney, Michael C. Mudd, raised some questions regarding Philadelphia’s current method of handling asbestos cases. Mudd filed a motion requesting a judge specially vacate General Court Regulation No. 2013-01, which has historically deferred punitive damages claims in asbestos cases. However, in late 2011, Judge John W. Herron, Philadelphia’s administrative judge of the trial division, changed the rules so that asbestos cases were not “reverse bifurcated,” meaning they were not deferred and consolidated with similar cases. In his filing, Mudd maintained that the plaintiff’s inability to present a punitive damages claim to the jury was a violation of Mrs. Checho’s right to due process of law. “Since asbestos trials in Philadelphia are no longer reverse bifurcated, the rationale for the deferral of punitive damages claims no longer exists,” Mudd wrote in his filing. If a jury can reasonably conclude a defendant’s guilt based on evidence, “then the punitive damages claim should be submitted to the jury,” he also wrote. Exposure to airborne asbestos is the primary cause of mesothelioma, which is why widespread use of the hazardous material was banned in the 1970s. Mesothelioma has a lengthy latency period; many of the victims of the disease were exposed to asbestos decades ago, often before the ban went into effect. Each year, approximately 3,000 mesothelioma diagnoses are made.

October 03, 2014 West Islip, New York - A state Supreme Court jury has awarded $7 million to plaintiff Ralph North, who was exposed to asbestos during construction of the Northport Power Station in the mid- to late-1960s and diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2012. The verdict determined the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) to be 100% liable for Mr. North’s illness. National Grid, acting as the primary defendant, took over the LILCO plants, including the Northport Power Station, in 2007. Mr. North worked installing boilers at the plant, but, as witness and former LILCO employee Richard Gallagher testified, the company never warned about the dangers of breathing asbestos, nor was the air quality monitored in any way. The $7 million for which National Grid is responsible breaks down to $3.5 million for pain and suffering, and another $3.5 million for future pain and suffering. Regarding the decision, National Grid argued that the jury got it wrong, writing in a statement, “While we sympathize with Mr. North and his family, we strongly believe [the] verdict is not supported by the facts and does not meet the legal standards applied to such cases. We believe we have strong legal and factual arguments to overturn this decision, and we will review our legal options including appeal.” Asbestos exposure is the primary cause of mesothelioma, a preventable type of cancer that has an extremely high mortality rate. Despite a ban on asbestos that began in the 1970s, there are approximately 3,000 mesothelioma diagnoses made each year.

October 13, 2014 San Francisco, California - Reviving a wrongful death asbestos lawsuit filed by the daughter of a U.S. Navy shipyard worker, a California appeals court has reversed a San Francisco Supreme Court’s ruling of summary judgment in favor of the defendant, Crane Co. The appeals court’s decision will send the plaintiff’s case back to trial court. Originally, the claim was filed by Robert Gottshall, who, after developing mesothelioma, sued Crane and 17 other defendants in 2010 for asbestos exposure. Mr. Gottshall passed away a few months after filing the claim, which led to his daughter, Kimbra Gottshall, taking the reins as the plaintiff. When Ms. Gottshall sued six additional entities, the case was transferred to a Pennsylvania federal court, which had previously granted summary judgment in favor of General Dynamics Corp, a defendant in a similar case involving Navy vessels and asbestos exposure. The San Francisco Supreme Court used the Pennsylvania court’s ruling to determine that Crane Co. was not liable for Mr. Gottshall’s illness because Mr. Gottshall was considered a “sophisticated user,” meaning he should have understood the dangers of working in proximity to asbestos- containing materials. The designation “sophisticated user” [of asbestos] applied to the U.S. Navy in the General Dynamics case, so the San Francisco Supreme Court extended that to Mr. Gottshall’s claim. This, the appeals court ruled, is where the lower court erred. “[The Pennsylvania federal court’s] application of California law was wrong, as any reading of the evolution of California’s sophisticated user defense demonstrates,” the judges wrote in their opinion. Richard Martin Grant, counsel for the Gottshall family, agreed with the appeals court’s decision. “A foreign court can’t decide on an important question of California law,” he reiterated. “The Pennsylvania judge predicted California would adopt a sophisticated intermediary defense and applied it. He was wrong.”

September 24, 2014 Olympia, Washington - Affirming a decision made by the Court of Appeals, a majority ruling by the Washington Supreme Court has found that claimant Gary Walston is unable to sue his former employer, The Boeing Company, because of the Industrial Insurance Act (IIA), which is a provision to the state’s Workers’ Compensation law that utilizes a no-fault compensation system to protect employers against personal injury lawsuits. Mr. Walston, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma – an asbestos-related cancer – in 2010, sought compensation for having developed the disease while working in a hammer shop at Boeing. Specifically, Mr. Walston alleged that he was exposed to the deadly toxin in 1985, when work crews were involved in a project to repair asbestos-containing pipe insulation above the hammer shop’s workstation. Although the workers attending to the insulation wore “moon suits,” Mr. Walston and his co-workers employees at the hammer shop were denied such protective equipment by their supervisors. According to the Supreme Court’s ruling, Boeing was immune from lawsuit because Mr. Walston failed to raise a question of material fact regarding whether the company was certain that the employees’ asbestos exposure would result in bodily harm. Therefore, the injury fell under the umbrella of IIA. The sole dissenting judge, Justice Charles Wiggins, argued that the majority’s ruling did not have the best interests of the employees in mind, and that encouraging workplace safety was a responsibility of the court. “[T]he court should be more, not less, vigilant in protecting workers when employers deliberately expose their workers to asbestos – a known deadly substance,” Wiggins wrote. He added, “The only way to deliberately produce the disease of mesothelioma is to intentionally and knowingly cause workers to inhale asbestos.” Justice Wiggins also pointed out that the nature of mesothelioma – its lengthy latency period, in particular – makes it impossible to foresee how exposure to asbestos will affect each individual who is exposed. Addressing the unsatisfied requirements of the Workers’ Compensation law, Justice Wiggins wrote, “It would undermine the purpose of the statute if an employer could implant a ticking time bomb in an employee’s body and escape liability simply because the particular injury that resulted could not be predicted with absolute certainty.”