Jury Awards $200 million in Punitive Damages in Asbestos Case
By Kate Moser (The recorder) on Law.com May 3, 2010
A Los Angeles jury awarded $200 million in punitive damages and $8.8 million in compensatory damages last week in an asbestos product liability case. But it looks likely to be reduced.
After the jury handed down its verdict, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Conrad Aragon asked attorneys from both sides to write briefs on what an appropriate punitive damages award would be. The judge "refused to enter the judgment" until he evaluates the legal basis for the award, said an attorney for defendant CertainTeed Corp., a building materials manufacturer the jury hit with 70 percent of the liability.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was assigned 30 percent of the liability.
"CertainTeed strongly disputes the verdict, and believes there is no constitutional or legal basis for such a grossly excessive award," said its lawyer, William Sayers, a partner in the Los Angeles office of McKenna Long & Aldridge. Sayers said he presumes he'll ask the court for a punitive damages multiplier of less than one.
Plaintiffs attorney William Levin, of San Francisco firm Levin Simes Kaiser & Gornick, argued that Rhoda Evans' mesothelioma was caused by asbestos fibers she breathed while washing her husband's work clothes. Bobby Evans, who asserted a loss of consortium claim, worked for the city's water and power department for 24 years. At one point, part of his job was to cut CertainTeed asbestos cement water pipe.
Levin's partner Laurel Simes handled the plaintiffs' testimony. Levin said jurors found Evans' story to be particularly compelling -- she has been raising grandchildren after the death of her daughter four years ago, Levin said, but is now dying of mesothelioma.
At trial, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power only disputed its share of the liability. A spokesman for the city attorney's office couldn't reach the trial attorney before The Recorder's deadline.
Sayers said that he'll argue in his briefs that the award misses the purpose of the punitive damages statute, since all of the officials the jury wants to punish aren't at the company anymore, and it hasn't sold asbestos products for 18 years.
Levin said the court didn't allow him to suggest to the jury a number to award in punitive damages, and that he urged jurors to come up with a "fair and appropriate award" that would mean more than a slap on the wrist to CertainTeed.
Punitive damages expert Curt Cutting, a partner at Encino, Calif.'s Horvitz & Levy, said it's rare for punitives to be awarded in asbestos cases. The evidence usually shows that people in the 1940s, '50s and '60s weren't fully conscious of the hazards of the product involved, so it's difficult to prove the malice, oppression or fraud central to the punitive damages law in California, he said.
Even beyond asbestos cases, the award in Rhoda Evans v. A.W. Chesterton Co., BC418867, would be considered sizable, Cutting noted, but it remains to be seen how much of it will survive.
"As far as I know, the largest punitive damages award ever upheld in California was $55 million," Cutting said. "The fact that the trial court has asked for briefing before entering judgment is probably a pretty good indication the judge has questions about the validity of a verdict that size." To view the actual source of this article written by Kate Moser for Law.com, click here.
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