Laclede County Jury Awards $28 Million to Compressor Plant Worker With Lung Disease; New Trial Ordered
After trial: The trial court ordered a new trial on compensatory and punitive damages because of instruction error, and the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed that order on October 5, 2016, so the 2013 verdict did not stand. We could not confirm the outcome of any retrial or settlement.
Won by Humphrey, Farrington & McClain.
A Laclede County jury awarded Philip Berger, a Copeland Scroll Compressors worker, $5 million in compensatory and $23 million in punitive damages after he developed hypersensitivity pneumonitis from contaminated cooling fluid. The trial court later granted a new trial on damages, and the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed that order in 2016, so the verdict did not stand.
What happened
On November 22, 2013, a Laclede County, Missouri jury returned a $28 million verdict for Philip Berger, a 56-year-old production worker at the Copeland Scroll Compressors plant. The award was $5 million in compensatory damages and $23 million in punitive damages. The jury deliberated about two hours after a trial that ran two weeks.
Berger developed hypersensitivity pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lungs caused by exposure to mold and bacteria. He said the exposure came from the water-based cooling fluid used with cutting tools at the plant. In his account, a ventilator failed and a vapor cloud filled the area where he worked. His lawyers argued the damage to his lungs was permanent.
Berger's case was that Copeland, a unit of Ferguson-based Emerson Climate Technologies, knew the fluid posed dangers and did not warn employees or give them safety training. His lead trial lawyer, Kenneth McClain, told the jury the company had treated him as a 'blue-collar guinea pig.' Part of the evidence concerned microbial testing of the fluid: Berger's side told jurors the company showed quality records but had no test results to back them up, and argued that the testing documents had been destroyed.
Copeland's lawyer, Joseph Orlet, said Berger kept working at the plant until trial with no change in his duties, including overtime and strenuous work, and argued that this was at odds with the disability claimed.
The verdict did not hold. The trial court's order reached both categories of damages, so neither the $5 million nor the $23 million stood after the ruling, and the case was sent back for a new damages trial. The trial court granted Copeland's motion for a new trial on Berger's compensatory and punitive damages claims, citing errors in two jury instructions. One of them, Instruction 10, told jurors they could draw inferences against a party that willfully destroyed evidence. On October 5, 2016, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, affirmed the new-trial order in Berger v. Copeland Corporation, LLC, 505 S.W.3d 337. The court held that the instruction violated Missouri law dating to 1926, which bars adverse-inference instructions as an impermissible comment on the evidence. Kenneth B. McClain, Andrew K. Smith, Jonathan M. Soper and Lauren E. McClain appeared for Berger on appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Humphrey, Farrington & McClain
All Humphrey, Farrington & McClain proven verdicts →As co-lead class counsel, Kenneth McClain helped secure a $145 million settlement, approved by a federal judge in October 2024, for roughly nine million Kia and Hyundai owners whose vehicles lacked standard engine immobilizers.
A Jackson County jury returned a $108.6 million verdict for the parents of a woman who died from sepsis after her husband's religious group prevented her from receiving medical care during a botched home birth.
Attorneys Kenneth McClain, Jonathan Soper, Chelsea Pierce, and J'Nan Kimak secured $35.72 million in confirmed ERISA arbitration awards for 177 current and former DST Systems employees whose 401(k) profit-sharing plan collapsed after fiduciaries concentrated more than 45 percent of plan assets in a single pharmaceutical stock that lost roughly 94 percent of its value.
A Boone County jury awarded $35.25 million to the family of Anita Gibbs, a Kansas City elementary school principal killed when a CenTra Trucking driver failed to slow for stopped traffic on Interstate 70 in 2006, after Ken McClain of Humphrey, Farrington and McClain used offensive collateral estoppel to limit the trial entirely to damages.
Related workplace injury verdicts
On September 7, 2019, Ulysses Cruz, a 48-year-old United Airlines ramp worker serving as a wing walker at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, was struck from behind by an Allied Aviation Fueling Company of Houston van whose driver said the morning sun was in his eyes. Cruz was paralyzed from the chest down and suffered a stroke two days later that cost him the use of his dominant right arm. After a two-week trial before Judge Ravi Sandill, a Harris County jury on October 25, 2021 found Allied 70 percent and driver Reginald Willis 30 percent at fault and awarded Cruz, his wife and their two children $352.7 million in compensatory damages. Judge Sandill conditioned denial of a new trial on a $117.5 million remittitur of noneconomic damages, which the family accepted, and an amended judgment of about $235.3 million was signed February 7, 2022. Allied appealed, the parties reached a confidential mediated settlement, and on July 18, 2023 the First Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and dismissed the case at the parties' joint request.
A Galveston federal jury awarded $100 million to ten contract workers exposed to carbon disulfide at BP's Texas City refinery in April 2007. The judge set aside the punitive damages, seven workers later settled on undisclosed terms, and the Fifth Circuit vacated the verdict for the remaining three in 2011.
After winning a $26.6 million jury verdict for a union mason who fell through defective scaffolding on the Longfellow Bridge, Andrew Abraham of Keches Law Group returned to court and proved that Liberty Mutual's insurers willfully refused to investigate or settle a clear liability case, prompting a judge to double the compensatory judgment to over $91 million under Chapter 93A and 176D.
William Kershaw served as co-lead class counsel in a wage-and-hour class action on behalf of roughly 23,600 California UPS drivers, securing an $87 million settlement for systematic denial of meal and rest breaks, the largest California wage-and-hour class action settlement at the time.