Mesothelioma Judgment Against Ethyl Corporation of About $1.1 Million, One Third of a Remitted $3.25 Million Award, Affirmed On Appeal

James Leoma Gaddy worked two jobs decades apart that exposed him to asbestos. As a college student in the early 1950s he spent summers as a laborer and pipefitter's helper at the International Paper mill in Springhill, Louisiana, where his assignments regularly involved stripping insulation off pipe to reach the flanges underneath. He testified that a single day could be spent doing nothing else, and that he could not recall ever being offered protective equipment there. In 1955, after finishing college, he went to work as a chemical engineer at Ethyl Corporation's plant in Baton Rouge, where he stayed until about 1960, working in the pilot plant and the sodium plant.

Gaddy was diagnosed with mesothelioma in July 2018. He filed a petition for damages in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans on September 21, 2018, naming Ethyl, International Paper, Owens-Illinois and other companies. He died before the case reached trial, and his children, Theresa Adams and James C. Gaddy, were substituted as his statutory survivors. Every defendant except Ethyl settled during the summer of 2019, and Ethyl, the last one left, removed the case to federal court on diversity grounds.

A week-long jury trial ran in the Eastern District of Louisiana in November 2019. The plaintiffs' case rested on Gaddy's own deposition testimony, taken before his death, together with an industrial hygienist, a physician qualified as an expert in asbestos disease, his treating cardiologist, and his son. Ethyl answered with three former plant employees and two experts of its own. The evidence described the stripping and rebuilding of the sodium cells at the Baton Rouge plant as a weekly routine rather than occasional maintenance.

On November 8, 2019 the jury found Ethyl both negligent and strictly liable and awarded $7,500,000 in general damages, divided evenly among physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life, plus $250,661.45 in medical expenses. The jury also allocated responsibility to International Paper and to Owens-Illinois, which had manufactured the Kaylo asbestos pipe covering shipped to the Springhill mill. Because Louisiana law gave Ethyl credit for the virile shares of the settling parties, the judgment entered against Ethyl on November 20, 2019 was one third of the total, $2,583,553.82 plus legal interest.

Ethyl moved for a new trial, for judgment as a matter of law, and in the alternative for remittitur. On March 4, 2020 Judge Eldon Fallon denied the first two and granted the third in part. Surveying Louisiana mesothelioma awards, he found the general damages excessive in light of Gaddy's advanced age, the short interval between his diagnosis and his death, his own statements that he had not been in much pain, and the heart disease he was already living with. The court remitted general damages to $3,000,000, which brought the award to $3,250,661.45, and gave the family the choice of accepting that figure or retrying the case. Applied to that award, the same one-third virile share leaves Ethyl answerable for $1,083,553.82 plus interest, the figure ranked here. It denied their motion to reconsider on April 13, 2020.

Both sides appealed. Ethyl argued the evidence could not support liability for asbestos disturbed during sodium-cell maintenance and that even the remitted damages were too high. The family argued the jury should never have been allowed to allocate a share to Owens-Illinois. On December 14, 2020 the Fifth Circuit affirmed every part of the judgment. It agreed with the district court that tearing out and rebuilding the sodium cells was "part and parcel of the Baton Rouge facility's operation" rather than temporary repair work, and it held that the trial judge's first-hand view of the evidence put him in a better position to weigh the damages. Ethyl had secured the judgment with a supersedeas bond and execution was stayed through the appeal. We found no public record of what was ultimately paid.