$1.6 Million Verdict for a Man Who Got Mesothelioma From Talc Dust His Father Carried Home, the First Talc Verdict Upheld on Appeal

Steven Kaenzig was born in 1967, the same year his father Wilfred, known as Wiz, started as a warehouse supervisor at Shulton's plant in Mays Landing, New Jersey. The plant made Old Spice and Desert Flower talcum powders. It took in about 40,000 pounds of raw talc a week and kept 60,000 to 80,000 pounds on hand, and by Wiz Kaenzig's account 99 percent of it came from one supplier, Whittaker, Clark & Daniels. The dust was everywhere. He brushed what he could off his hair and clothes before leaving work, but he came home coated in it every day, picked up his baby son before changing, and later wrestled and played with him. Steven's mother laundered the talc-caked work clothes with her son nearby. That went on until 1975, when Shulton moved talc production to Tennessee after customers complained that the containers of its higher-priced products were arriving dusted with talc.

In October 2011, at 44, Steven Kaenzig was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a cancer of the abdominal lining caused by asbestos. He had worked since 1988 installing residential fiberglass insulation and testified that he had never handled asbestos on the job; the dangers were well known by then, and he would not enter an older home until any asbestos had been removed. He and his wife Linda sued in Middlesex County in July 2012. By trial, Whittaker was the only defendant left.

The case was tried in October and November 2013. The Kaenzigs' geologist, Sean Fitzgerald, testified that the three mines Whittaker drew on between 1967 and 1975, in northwest Italy, Alabama and North Carolina, all showed asbestos in geological surveys, that samples of the Italian talc and of Shulton's finished powder had tested positive, and that even a one percent tremolite contamination in a 50-pound bag would release enormous numbers of fibers. Dr. Jacqueline Moline gave the medical causation opinion. Whittaker argued that the exposure was unproven and that Fitzgerald should not have been allowed to testify. The jury found for the family and awarded $1.4 million to Steven for pain and suffering and $200,000 to Linda for loss of consortium, $1.6 million in all. On December 20, 2013 the trial court denied Whittaker's motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a new trial.

Whittaker appealed, challenging the evidentiary rulings, the expert testimony and the denial of its post-trial motions. On March 27, 2015, in Kaenzig v. Charles B. Chrystal Co. (No. A-2512-13), a three-judge panel of the Appellate Division affirmed in full, finding no error and no abuse of discretion. Jeffrey Blumstein of Szaferman Lakind argued the appeal for the family, with Robert Lytle and Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg on the brief. The decision was widely reported as the first cosmetic talc mesothelioma verdict anywhere to be upheld on appeal, three years before the same lawyers and experts brought the theory to trial against Johnson & Johnson in Lanzo.