FAG Bearings TCE Verdict of $20.6 Million Cut to $7.6 Million on Appeal; Woman Has Liver Disease

A federal jury in the Western District of Missouri found in 2016 that FAG Bearings was responsible for exposing Jodelle Kirk to a toxic solvent as a child, and awarded her $7.6 million in compensatory damages for the autoimmune hepatitis that followed. The jury also returned $13 million in punitive damages, for a combined verdict of $20.6 million. The compensatory award is the part that survived appeal.

From 1973 to 1982, FAG Bearings released thousands of gallons of trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial degreasing solvent, at its manufacturing plant in Joplin. In 1991, state health officials and the EPA found TCE in residential wells in the villages of Silver Creek and Saginaw, south of the plant. Later litigation established that FAG Bearings alone was responsible for that contamination. Kirk's parents moved to Silver Creek in 1987, before anyone had warned the community. She was born the next year and spent her entire childhood there.

In 2002, Kirk was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a rare liver disease in which the immune system makes antibodies that attack liver proteins, causing inflammation that can progress to fibrosis and cirrhosis. The Eighth Circuit later noted that she remains on medication to manage the disease and faces serious medical issues in the years ahead. She sued FAG Bearings and its member company, Schaeffler Group USA, in 2013, alleging negligent release of TCE and a failure to warn the community.

The case turned on causation, because TCE had never been definitively identified as the cause of autoimmune hepatitis in people. Kirk's lawyers, Kenneth B. McClain and Jonathan M. Soper of Independence, Missouri, presented two physicians who testified that TCE exposure causes the disease. They also called hydrologist Lorne Everett, who testified that he had never seen higher TCE contamination than in the Newton County Wells site and that Kirk was exposed to significant levels throughout her early childhood, by drinking, breathing and skin contact. Her mother testified that the family would not have moved to Silver Creek had it been warned. After a lengthy trial, the jury found for Kirk on liability and set compensatory damages at $7.6 million. It then heard additional evidence on punitive damages and added $13 million.

Both defendants appealed. On April 5, 2018, the Eighth Circuit held that Schaeffler Group USA could not be held liable as FAG Bearings' successor and ordered it dismissed. The court rejected the defense challenges to the experts, saying the medical and contamination evidence was enough for the causation question to go to the jury, and it held the failure-to-warn claim was properly submitted. The compensatory verdict against FAG Bearings, LLC was left in place. Because the single punitive figure had been set against both companies, the court ordered a new trial limited to punitive damages against FAG Bearings. One judge dissented and would have upheld the full verdict against both defendants. The punitive retrial never took place: after the case went back to the district court, Kirk and FAG Bearings settled on terms that were not disclosed.