Articles Posted in Chemical Exposure Injuries

by

Heather Roush was in her 20s and 35 weeks pregnant. She was with her husband, Jayneson Roush, 37, when they checked into the Kimball, a condominium hotel. The Roushes were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Their hotel room was located next to the hotel’s boiler room, which became filled with carbon monoxide when exhaust from a boiler vented into the boiler room and the building’s hotel room instead of into the outside.

Heather and Jayneson fell ill and went to a nearby hospital where testing revealed they were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Despite hyperbaric chamber therapy, both Heather and Jayneson sustained permanent brain damage. The brain damage manifested itself in memory and word-finding difficulties, noise intolerance, anxiety and depression. Additionally, the birth of Heather’s baby was complicated by her condition.

Continue reading

by

On April 27, 2017, Kevin Hartley was working for his uncle, Tony Hartley, at Hartley’s Painting. Hartley was refinishing the bathtub at an apartment complex in Nashville, Tenn.

While on the job, Kevin was wearing a respirator mask and gloves but was overcome by fumes from the NAPCO White Lighting Low Odor Stripper. He passed out and died the following day at the age of 21.

Wendy Hartley, his mother and special administrator of Kevin’s estate, filed a lawsuit against the North American Polymer Company Ltd. (NAPCO), which sold the product. The lawsuit then added Samax Enterprises Inc. (Samax), the company that manufactured the product. Wendy Hartley set out two causes of action for each of the two defendants. One was in strict product liability and the other was in negligence, alleging that the product was “unreasonably dangerous and toxic, and that defendants did not adequately warn users about the danger and did not adequately test the product to ensure that it was safe for its reasonable anticipated use.”

Continue reading

by

Alfred Bennett and his wife filed a lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. on behalf of Alfred who had been a mechanic there. He claimed he was exposed to asbestos in handling auto parts. This case was tried in the City of St. Louis, 22nd Judicial Circuit. The jury’s verdict of Aug. 30, 2019 was for $5.725 million in actual damages to Alfred and $708,000 to his wife and $2 million in punitive damages.

Bennett was a mechanic at Ford, Mercury and Lincoln dealerships from the 1960s until the 1980s.

During those decades, he came into regular contact with brakes, gaskets, clutches and original equipment manufacturer replacement parts, which allegedly exposed him to asbestos.

Continue reading

by

In the case of Campbell v. Acme Installations Inc., highlighted in the April 2019 Illinois Bar Journal authored by Eric J. Muñoz, general jurisdiction for nonresident defendants is clarified.

In the Campbell case, the plaintiff brought a lawsuit against General Electric and other companies resulting from his alleged exposure to GE-manufactured industrial furnaces located at a Chicago steel company where he worked from 1964 to 1965. At the time of the filing of the lawsuit, GE was based in New York, and its principal place of business was in Massachusetts.

GE had been licensed to conduct business in Illinois since 1897. GE employed some 3,000 employees at 30 facilities that it owned, leased, or operated throughout Illinois. It also had six business units located in the state. GE’s annual sales from its Illinois operations “exceeded $1 billion, with a claimed economic impact in Illinois of $4.8 billion.”

Continue reading

by

The Illinois Appellate Court of the 1st District resolved a discovery dispute in an insurance coverage lawsuit between plaintiff-insured Motorola Solutions Inc. and the defendant-insurers Zurich Insurance Co. and Associated Indemnity Corp. The court held that absent an applicable cooperation clause, attorney-client privilege applies to any appropriate documents.

This was an insurance coverage dispute between Motorola and the two insurance companies that had to do with several personal injury lawsuits brought by former employees and contractors who claimed they had been exposed to chemicals in “clean rooms” located in Motorola’s manufacturing facilities. It was argued that the court should require defendants to defend and absorb defense costs for these personal injury actions.

Continue reading

by

Plaintiffs Lenny and Tracy Chapman filed a lawsuit against Hiland Partners GP Holdings LLC, et al. who owned and operated a natural gas plant in North Dakota. Missouri Basin offers trucking services to gas companies in North Dakota. Hiland entered into a Master Service Contract (Hiland MSC) with Missouri Basin in 2008 whereby Missouri Basin, as “Contractor,” agreed to perform various services for Hiland.

As part of the agreement, Missouri Basin agreed to “indemnify, defend and save harmless Hiland Group . . . from and against any and all claims, demands, judgments, defense costs, or suits . . . in any way, directly or indirectly, arising out of or related to the performance of this Contract.”  The Hiland MSC also included an Oklahoma choice-of-law provision.

On Oct. 18, 2011, Hiland requested Missouri Basin to remove water from condensation tanks at the Watford plant. Missouri Basin contacted B&B Heavy Haul LLC who sent the plaintiff Lenny Chapman to the gas plant. Chapman arrived shortly after midnight.  He and an employee of Hiland began connecting the tank to the B&B truck that Chapman was driving. An explosion occurred and Chapman was seriously injured.

Continue reading

by

The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago has affirmed a lower court decision by a federal judge dismissing Gregory Cripe’s lawsuit for exposure to chemical toxic fumes from Pur-Fect Lok 834A. This product is a glue made by the defendant, Henkel Corp. Cripe was exposed to the toxic fumes when he was working on his employer’s roof.

The glue in question contained methylene diphenyl diisocyanate, which can cause serious injury.

Cripe and his wife, Tammy, sued Henkel Corp. under the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction in federal court, contending that exposure to the chemical byproduct of the glue caused both neurological and psychological problems, which could have been prevented if the adhesive had better warnings.

Continue reading

by

The on-the-job exposure to asbestos experienced by Ronnie Startley occurred in Alabama. Startley was a drywall finisher. However, for 3 to 4 months in 1965, he worked on approximately 50 jobs in Chicago with his cousin, Walter Startley. The Startleys used several brands of drywall joint compound that contained asbestos. Startley was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2013; he died a year later in Alabama. The Alabama statute of limitations blocked Startley’s estate’s claims there.

According to Walter Startley’s testimony, during an evidence deposition in the Illinois lawsuit that Ronnie’s estate filed against Welco Manufacturing Co., the manufacturer of Well-Coat, the joint compound they used for Chicago projects in 1965 were “USG, Gold Bond, Best Wall, and Wel-Coat.” He added, “Wel-Coat and Best Wall was the most we used.”

When Walter was asked whether he could recall having more jobs with “one product more than the other,” Walter said, “Well, I really can’t, because that’s a long time ago, but I remember the bags was being like gray-looking stuff and I imagine it would be Wel-Coat or Best Wall.”

Continue reading

by

From 1959 to 1964, Rivers Sampson worked as a sandblaster and used silica as an abrasive agent.  In 2014, at the age of 77,  Sampson died of sepsis and silicosis, which is a progressive disease caused by inhaling silica dust. Having silica dust attached to the lungs causes inflammation and scarring.

Sampson’s two surviving adult children brought a lawsuit against more than 20 companies that mined and sold silica for use in sandblasting. It was alleged that these defendants chose not to warn of the health risks of silica exposure. Some of these defendants settled before the trial for confidential amounts or were otherwise dismissed from the case. However, the lawsuit did proceed to a jury verdict against Mississippi Valley Silica Co.

The Sampson family sought punitive damages claiming that the defendants, in choosing not to warn of the known health hazard, constituted actual malice or gross negligence. The Sampson family asserted that the defendant failed to add product warnings regarding the health hazards of silica exposure until 1972, although the industry was well aware of the dangers since at least the 1930s.

Continue reading

by

Carus Corp. (Carus) was an international company that developed and sold chemical products for municipal and industrial applications. In a federal lawsuit, Carus was named as a defendant. Carus’s products included a chemical called Totalox, which essentially was designed as a deodorizer for sewer systems.

The town of Lexington (town) used Totalox in its sewer treatment plants. In 2010, John Machin, a town employee, was exposed to Totalox when a storage container valve broke during the delivery of Totalox to one of the town’s wastewater stations. He suffered reactive airways syndrome, which was also known as chemically induced asthma or obstructive lung disease.

As a result of his injuries, he filed a workers’ compensation claim and was allowed workers’ compensation benefits. The South Carolina Supreme Court accepted four certified questions from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina: (1) Under South Carolina law, when a plaintiff seeks recovery from a person, other than his employer, for an injury sustained on the job, may the jury hear an explanation of why the employer is not part of the instant action?; (2) when a plaintiff seeks recovery from a person, other than his employer, for an injury sustained on the job, may a defendant argue the empty chair defense and suggest that plaintiff’s employer is the wrongdoer?; (3) In connection with Question 2, if a defendant retains the right to argue the “empty chair” defense against a plaintiff’s employer, may a court instruct the jury that an employer’s legal responsibility has been determined by another forum, specifically, the state’s workers’ compensation commission?; and (4) when a plaintiff seeks recovery from a person, other than his employer, for an injury sustained on the job, may the court allow the jury to apportion fault against the nonparty employer by placing the name of the employer on the verdict form?

Continue reading