Jury Awards Plaintiffs $17 Million in Asbestos Claim Against Employer Which Led to Mesothelioma

Asbestos has been linked to a dramatically increased risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma for decades, so when current or former employees claim that their employer exposed them to the dangerous chemical in some way, one might assume that the employer would offer compensation or the personal injury lawsuit would be easily decided in favor of the plaintiff. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, but for one grieving Pennsylvania family, the jury ruled in their favor after they lost a loved one to mesothelioma.

John Busby was a 72-year-old former factory worker for the ESAB Group. He worked for the company from 1962 to 2001, when he retired. After his retirement, however, he developed mesothelioma, most likely due to asbestos exposure at his former place of work, and passed away in July 2012. His widow filed the asbestos lawsuit against the ESAB Group, under the state’s Wrongful Death Act and Survival Act.

The mesothelioma case was made possible because of a previous ruling involving the now infamous asbestos case, Kathleen Tooey v. AK Steel Corp. Kathleen Tooey’s husband, John, worked for Ferro Engineering, for 18 years. He seemed to be safe from potentially dangerous chemicals and exposure to many hazardous situations because he worked in the sales department of the steel company, but his company sold “hot tops,” which are products used in the molding process for molten steel. He was exposed to some dangerous chemicals anyway, and years after he left the company, he developed asbestos cancer. Although the incubation period for mesothelioma is typically decades, this puts workers in a bind with their former employers. Many workers who develop cancer are retired by the time they get sick, which puts them well out of the 300-week window to claim workers’ compensation for their illness. However, thanks to the Tooey lawsuit, Pennsylvania determined that employers who exposed their current and former employees to asbestos were required to pay workers comp claims outside of that time frame.

“The consequences of employers’ proposed interpretation of the act to prohibit an employee from filing an action at common law even though employee has no opportunity to seek redress under the act leaves the employee with no remedy against his or her employer, a consequences that contravenes the act’s intended purpose of benefiting the injured worker,” the court ruled in an opinion penned by Justice Deborah Todd in November 2013. “It is inconceivable that the Legislature, in enacting a statute specifically designed to benefit employees, intended to leave a certain class of employees who have suffered the most serious of work-related injuries without any redress under the act or at common law.”

ESAB Group was one of the group of employers back in 2013, during the Tooey case, who argued that they should be able to avoid mesothelioma cases. Many workers, especially industrial employees, in the 1990s were exposed to asbestos because it was a standard building material. While the material is not entirely gone from all old buildings, a federal push has cleaned up much of the problem, and new buildings cannot use the material at all. However, there are still many retired workers in Pennsylvania and beyond who may have developed cancer due to their asbestos exposure.

Earlier this year, employers in Pennsylvania began to try to limit the security imposed by the Tooey ruling.

“The holding in Tooey has the potential to unduly burden Pennsylvania employers and their relationships with their employees, as well as labor relations in general, by allowing employees in certain cases involving latent diseases to circumvent the administrative hearing process required in occupational injury claims,” FirstEnergy Corp said in its motion in a February case very similar to Busby’s – a widow filed a lawsuit against the company after her husband, a former employee, died of mesothelioma.

These attempts have, thanks to Busby’s widow, been stymied. Courts are still sympathetic to victims of asbestos toxicity, and the lawsuit could usher in a new wave of victims seeking help from former employers.

If you or a loved one have developed mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure, contact our asbestos lawyers for legal help.