$30.3 Million Take-Home Asbestos Verdict for Family of Mesothelioma Victim

Mark Buttitta built a career in advertising and raised three daughters with his wife Susan in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. In 2001 he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the chest caused by asbestos. He died on December 20, 2002, four days before Christmas. He was 50 years old.

The exposure that killed him began decades earlier, in his childhood home. His father, Frank Buttitta Sr., worked as a parts picker at General Motors parts warehouses in Bloomfield and later Englewood, New Jersey, pulling brakes and clutches that contained asbestos. His brother worked at the warehouses too. The men often wore the same work clothes for days at a stretch, and the fibers came home with them. Mark breathed that dust as a boy, sitting on his father's lap in the evenings. During college summers in the early 1970s he took his own turn as a parts picker in the same warehouses.

After his death, Susan Buttitta sued a long list of companies in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Bergen County, in a case captioned Buttitta v. Allied-Signal. By the time the case reached trial in early 2008, two defendants remained: Asbestos Corporation Ltd., a Canadian supplier of raw asbestos fiber, and BorgWarner, which made asbestos-containing clutches. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case for the family.

On February 26, 2008, after weeks of testimony, a six-member Bergen County jury deliberated about four hours and returned a verdict of $30,312,204 against both companies, jointly and severally. The award included $8 million for Mark's pain and suffering, $9,281,660 for his lost earnings, $2 million for Susan's loss of consortium, $2,030,544 for the loss of his services to his family, and $9 million for the loss of parental care to his three daughters. It was reported at the time as the largest asbestos verdict in New Jersey history.

Both companies appealed. They argued that the family had not proven enough exposure to their specific products to establish causation, and that the expert testimony behind the take-home exposure theory was novel and unsupported. On April 5, 2010, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey rejected those arguments and affirmed the verdict in full. The court found sufficient evidence that Mark had regularly worked in close proximity to asbestos-containing parts, and it upheld the damages as well, noting the trial judge's view that the economic calculations were conservative.

The case became a reference point in what defense lawyers were already calling the second wave of asbestos litigation: claims brought not by insulators or shipyard workers but by people who encountered the fibers at home, on laundry and on a parent's work clothes. Mark Buttitta's own time in the warehouses amounted to a few college summers. The verdict his family won stands at $30,312,204, affirmed on appeal.