Mealey's Asbestos : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Asbestos

January 09, 2025
Mandatory, Standardized Asbestos-Talc Testing Proposed By FDA

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Talc-containing cosmetics would undergo standardized and mandatory testing designed to identify the presence of asbestos under a rule proposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
January 08, 2025
Pipe Maker Opposes Reopening Expert Discovery In Asbestos Case

OAKLAND, Calif. — An asbestos pipe defendant told a California judge that it diligently pursued experts for its defense and that it would be prejudicial to reopen expert discovery simply because the plaintiffs did not exhibit the same behavior.
January 08, 2025
Degree Of Difficulty In Asbestos-Talc Case At Issue In Briefing Over Costs

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A talc defendant and a widow have wrapped briefing in a case in which $7.5 million in punitive damages have been awarded; the defendant indicated that it will appeal.
January 06, 2025
Judge Won’t Recuse From Asbestos-Talc Law Firm Spat

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An Alabama federal judge on Jan. 3 declined to recuse himself from a law firm’s suit alleging breach of contract involving a partner’s handling of asbestos-talc claims involving Johnson & Johnson and its debtor affiliate, saying his former work for the firm did not bring his impartiality into question.
January 06, 2025
Cape Asbestos Assets Receiver: Fines, Prison Threatened After English Ruling

COLUMBIA, S.C. — An English law firm is threatening imprisonment and fines for a receiver’s “tortious conduct” and contempt of an English court ruling, the man appointed to handle a foreign company’s assets in South Carolina asbestos litigation told a judge in the state.
January 03, 2025
FTCA Asbestos Trial Ends In Judgment For United States

SEATTLE — A federal judge in Washington entered judgment for the United States after a bench trial in a Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) case involving home-based asbestos exposures originating from a shipyard, finding that alleged violations of regulations permitted the case to proceed to verdict but that a daughter could not establish sufficient causation for take-home or environmental claims related to her mother’s mesothelioma.
January 03, 2025
5th Circuit Won’t Revive Asbestos Trust Expert’s Negligence Claim

NEW ORLEANS — An asbestos expert failed in his effort to have the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals revive his negligence case against a company that performed an audit of his B-reader results that resulted in him being excluded from asbestos bankruptcy filings.
January 03, 2025
New York Court Reverses Ruling In Figure Skater's Asbestos-Talc Suit

NEW YORK — A New York appeals court reversed a ruling denying Johnson & Johnson summary judgment in an asbestos case, saying a figure skater’s epidemiologist’s concession that many variables went into a person’s total dose of exposure did not sufficiently refute evidence that the company’s product could not have caused his mesothelioma.
December 20, 2024
Family Says Texas Court Didn’t Ditch Causation Standard In Asbestosis Case

HOUSTON — Asbestosis is a unique disease that requires a huge dose of exposure and doesn’t occur idiopathically, and an opinion reversing a summary judgment ruling based on direct evidence of exposure from a single source doesn’t rewrite the state’s causation law, a family tells the Texas Supreme Court.
December 20, 2024
Cape Asbestos Plaintiffs Dismiss Suit After Removal, Jurisdiction Challenge

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A group of more than 150 plaintiffs who sued Cape LLC and various related entities over an alleged scheme to sell asbestos in the United States while plotting to avoid liability voluntarily dismissed the action without prejudice after one of the defendants removed the case and asked for dismissal on jurisdictional grounds.
December 19, 2024
Johnson & Johnson Can’t Swap Entities As Defendants, R.I. Judge Says

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Plaintiffs are ultimately the masters of their complaints and may sue who they see fit, a Rhode Island judge said in denying LLT Management LLC’s and Johnson & Johnson Holdco Inc.’s motion to substitute two related entities they claim now hold asbestos-talc related liabilities.
December 18, 2024
Contempt, Stay At Issue In Asbestos Expert Subpoena Case

NEW YORK — An asbestos expert, her hospital employer and Johnson & Johnson, locked in a battle over production of the identities of individuals the expert relied on in a study on talc exposures, briefed a New York Supreme Court justice on whether contempt sanctions are warranted for failure to produce evidence or whether a forthcoming motion to reargue and a pending motion for a protective order stayed an appellate court’s ruling, according to documents filed on the court’s docket.
December 18, 2024
Facing Asbestos Trial Delay, Judge Advances Hearing On Reopening Expert Discovery

OAKLAND, Calif. — After a couple warned that experts on both sides of an asbestos case are unavailable and that continuing with the existing schedule would threaten to delay the case, a California judge issued a tentative ruling advancing a hearing on reopening expert discovery. Separately, the plaintiffs appealed a decision granting summary judgment to asbestos fiber supplier Union Carbide Corp.
December 18, 2024
Talc Company Calls Arguments For Reopening Case ‘Hollow,’ ‘Legally Meaningless’

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A distribution agreement that will allegedly now show connections to Connecticut has been in the plaintiff’s possession the entire time; an unpublished and not final South Carolina court ruling finding fraud does not warrant reopening the case; and arguments to the contrary are “hollow and legally meaningless,” a talc company tells a Connecticut judge.
December 17, 2024
Experts, Punitive Damages At Heart Of Connecticut Motions After $15M Talc Verdict

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A man urged a Connecticut judge to impose punitive damages in the wake of a $15 million verdict, saying that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) knew for decades about the dangers of asbestos and that there were asbestos fibers in its talc products but continued marketing a product that would be used on children. But in a trio of briefs, J&J and its various entities said the verdict resulted from improper court decisions on the admission of experts, wrongly given instructions and belabored references to other litigation the company faces.
December 17, 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.
December 17, 2024
Third-Party Defendant Escapes Shipyard Asbestos Suit

NEW ORLEANS — A third-party asbestos defendant secured summary judgment in a federal suit in Louisiana after the judge concluded that a previous settlement between the plaintiff and the company precluded the action but that the opinion didn’t prevent the shipyard that brought the claims from seeking virile share contribution at trial.
December 17, 2024
J&J Opposes Pro Hac Vice Status In Wake Of Conduct Behind New Trial Order

PORTLAND, Ore. — Johnson & Johnson entities urged a judge not to renew the pro hac vice status of plaintiff attorney Ben Adams citing the failure to heed court orders and other misconduct that a trial court judge found reached such a level that it likely influenced the jury and required retrying a case that produced a $260 million asbestos-talc verdict that originally included $200 million in punitive damages.
December 16, 2024
U.K. Insurer Wins Stay Of Arbitration In Reinsurance Billings Dispute

NEW YORK — Saying in part that the U.S.-based defendant didn’t show “by a preponderance of the evidence that an agreement to arbitrate exists between the parties,” a New York federal judge cited “New York state law” in granting a U.K.-based insurer’s petition to stay arbitration.
December 12, 2024
No Cert Petition Planned For Dismissal Of J&J Spinoff’s 2nd Chapter 11 Case

TRENTON, N.J. — There will be no U.S. Supreme Court petition filed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) spinoff LLT Management LLC over the second dismissal of its Chapter 11 case, the Official Committee of Talc Claimants told a New Jersey federal bankruptcy judge in preparation for a hearing to decide if the case should be closed.
December 12, 2024
Insurer Seeks Summary Judgment Argument In Asbestos Coverage Row

OMAHA, Neb. — National Indemnity Co. (NICO) has moved in Nebraska federal court for oral argument on pending motions for partial summary judgment in its suit to enforce obligations by defendants it calls reinsurers — one of whom is now insolvent — for liability NICO incurred related to claims for asbestos exposure.
December 11, 2024
Judge Faults Lawyer Misconduct, Grants New Trial After $260M Talc Verdict

PORTLAND, Ore. — Failure to heed court orders and other misconduct reached the level that it likely influenced the jury and requires retrying a case that produced a $260 million asbestos-talc verdict that originally included $200 million in punitive damages, an Oregon judge said in granting Johnson & Johnson entities’ motion.
December 11, 2024
South Carolina Judge Orders New Asbestos-Talc Trial Over Withheld Evidence

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Asbestos-talc companies filed a notice of appeal of a ruling finding that an attorney responsible for discovery committed fraud and “intentionally concealed documents” detailing sales of products, which a judge in South Carolina said in granting a new trial could have impacted the jury’s verdict in the companies’ favor.
December 11, 2024
Son Takes Organ Loss Asbestos Case To Delaware Supreme Court

WILMINGTON, Del. — The son of a man injured at work appealed a Delaware state court decision affirming a ruling by the state’s industrial board that credited an employer’s expert’s impairment rating, a conclusion he said the court reached by ignoring that the workers’ compensation statute considers even partial loss of use of a body part a permanent loss.
December 10, 2024
Plaintiff: Evidence Of Fraud Warrants Hauling Talc Company Back Into Suit

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A Connecticut court should reopen a judgment dismissing asbestos-talc claims on jurisdictional grounds in the wake of evidence directly contradicting statements its counsel made in briefing about its presence in the state, a plaintiff tells a judge in a Dec. 9 memorandum.