New Mexico Mechanic's Mesothelioma Death Brings $9.125 Million Judgment Against Ford
After trial: Reduced and paid. Ford's appeal did not change the amount because the trial judge again found no remittitur warranted, and judgment was entered November 2, 2020 for $9,125,000 plus 15 percent post-judgment interest.
Won by Balick & Balick, LLC.
Larry Knecht, a lifelong auto mechanic in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed mesothelioma from working with Ford's asbestos-containing brakes and clutches and died in December 2014, more than three years before his case reached trial. His widow, Paula Knecht, tried the failure-to-warn claim to a Delaware jury in 2018 against Ford, the only defendant left of the eighteen originally sued. The jury set total compensatory damages at $40,625,000, assigned Ford 20 percent of the fault among twenty compared parties, and added $1,000,000 in punitive damages, putting Ford's total liability at $9,125,000. Ford's appeal reached the Delaware Supreme Court, which sent the case back on a legal technicality about how to measure an excessive verdict, but the trial judge again found the underlying figure sound and the number held. Final judgment of $9,125,000 plus interest was entered in November 2020, and Ford dropped its remaining appeal three months later.
What happened
Larry Knecht spent most of his working life as an auto mechanic, running Knecht Automotive in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The work put him in daily contact with asbestos-containing brakes and clutches made by Ford Motor Company. In May 2014 he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining of the lungs and abdomen tied to asbestos exposure. He and his wife, Paula Knecht, sued Ford and seventeen other companies that August, alleging the manufacturers knew of the asbestos hazard in their products and failed to warn him. Larry Knecht died that December, just shy of his 72nd birthday.
The case moved through Delaware's asbestos docket for years before reaching trial in Superior Court in New Castle County. By the time jury selection began on May 13, 2018, every other defendant had settled or been dismissed, leaving Ford alone at the defense table. The court applied New Mexico law to the merits of the claim, since that is where Knecht lived and worked. Over sixteen days of testimony and three days of deliberation, the jury heard from Paula Knecht and from medical experts on how asbestos fibers cause mesothelioma.
The jury returned its verdict on June 8, 2018. It set Paula Knecht's total compensatory damages at $40,625,000, then compared the fault of twenty parties connected to the case and assigned Ford a 20 percent share, putting Ford's compensatory liability at $8,125,000. The jury separately found Ford liable for $1,000,000 in punitive damages, a figure Ford never challenged as excessive. Combined, Ford's total exposure came to $9,125,000.
Ford asked the trial judge for a new trial or a reduction of the award, arguing the verdict was too large. Judge Ferris W. Wharton denied both motions in a written opinion dated January 31, 2019, reasoning that no one had to pay the $40,625,000 figure and that Ford's actual $8,125,000 share was the number that mattered. Ford appealed, and the Delaware Supreme Court agreed with Ford on one narrow point: it held in December 2019 that the excessiveness of a verdict has to be measured against the jury's full damages finding, not a defendant's reduced share after apportionment, and sent the case back for the trial court to run that analysis again.
On remand, the same judge reconsidered the full $40,625,000 figure against the trial evidence and denied remittitur again, in an order dated March 3, 2020 and corrected that June. Ford tried to appeal that order immediately, but the Delaware Supreme Court dismissed the attempt on May 22, 2020 as interlocutory, because the trial court had not yet ruled on how interest would be calculated. Judgment was entered on November 2, 2020 for $9,125,000, plus post-judgment interest at New Mexico's statutory rate of 15 percent running from June 9, 2018, the day after the verdict. Ford filed a notice of appeal a week later, then filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on February 16, 2021. The bond Ford had posted to secure the judgment during the appeal was released by stipulation on March 24, 2021.
Adam Balick, Michael Collins Smith, and Patrick J. Smith of Balick & Balick represented Paula Knecht at trial and on appeal, alongside Bartholomew J. Dalton and colleagues at Dalton & Associates.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Delaware Supreme Court opinion, Dec. 2, 2019·Archived copy
- 2.Delaware Superior Court opinion, Jan. 31, 2019·Archived copy
- 3.CourtListener copy of the Delaware Superior Court post-trial opinion, Jan. 31, 2019 (Wharton, J.)
- 4.Delaware Superior Court decision on remand, March 3, 2020, corrected June 11, 2020 (Wharton, J.)
- 5.Delaware Supreme Court order, No. 129, 2020, May 22, 2020
- 6.Delaware CourtConnect docket, C.A. No. N14C-08-164 (Superior Court, New Castle County)
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