$7.7 Million Verdict for Bus Driver's Mesothelioma From Garage Brake Dust
After trial: Reduced by the Appellate Division on November 10, 2017: pain and suffering from $6 million to $3 million as excessive under CPLR 5501(c), and wrongful death damages from $1.5 million to $270,000 for lack of proof of the value of lost services, leaving $3.47 million plus the $200,000 loss of services award as upheld. Whether the plaintiff stipulated to the reduced amounts rather than retrying damages, and whether Navistar paid, are not public.
Won by Levy Konigsberg LLP.
A Syracuse jury awarded $7.7 million in December 2014 to Mary Nash, whose husband Lewis drove school buses for the Fayetteville-Manlius district for nearly four decades and died of mesothelioma at 81 after years of breathing asbestos dust from Navistar brakes and gaskets serviced in the district garage. Levy Konigsberg tried the case against Navistar, the sole remaining defendant, and it was reported as the largest asbestos verdict in Syracuse history. In November 2017 the Appellate Division cut the pain and suffering award in half and the wrongful death award to $270,000, leaving $3.47 million.
What happened
Lewis Nash drove school buses for the Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District outside Syracuse from the late 1950s into the 1990s, and for part of that time he also worked as a district janitor. Every route started and ended at the district's bus garage, where he clocked in, turned in work orders and talked with the mechanics who kept the fleet running. The buses were built by International Harvester, later Navistar, and were sold with asbestos-containing brakes, gaskets and clutches. When the mechanics ground brake linings and blew out brake drums, the dust filled the garage, and Mr. Nash breathed it as a bystander for decades.
In September 2011 he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, the cancer caused by asbestos. He died on September 20, 2012, at 81, at home in Manlius. His widow, Mary Nash, sued Navistar and others in Onondaga County. By the time the case reached trial on December 4, 2014, Navistar was the only defendant left. Levy Konigsberg tried the case for Mrs. Nash. The evidence included testimony from the family and from experts on the release of asbestos fibers from brake work, and on Navistar's knowledge of the hazard. The company argued that its brakes and gaskets could not be shown to have caused the disease and that it owed no duty to warn a bystander.
In late December 2014 the jury found Navistar liable for Mr. Nash's death and returned a verdict of $7.7 million: $3 million for his physical pain and suffering, $3 million for his emotional pain and suffering between the diagnosis and his death, $200,000 to Mrs. Nash for loss of services and society, $1 million in wrongful death damages from the date of death to the verdict and $500,000 for the years he would otherwise have lived. It was reported as the largest asbestos award ever returned in Syracuse. Navistar moved to set aside the verdict and for a new trial, and then appealed.
On November 10, 2017 the Appellate Division rejected Navistar's arguments that the plaintiff's experts should have been excluded, that causation was unproven and that no duty ran to a bystander, and it upheld the liability finding and the $200,000 loss of services award. But it found the damages excessive. The combined $6 million for pain and suffering exceeded what comparable recent awards allowed and was reduced to $3 million, and because the plaintiff had offered no specific values for the services Mr. Nash performed for his household, the $1.5 million in wrongful death damages was cut to $270,000. The award that stood came to $3.47 million, a reduction of $4.3 million.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Levy Konigsberg LLP
All Levy Konigsberg LLP proven verdicts →A Manhattan jury found in May 2019 that asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower caused Donna Olson's pleural mesothelioma, awarding $25 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages, the largest talc verdict in New York history. Jerome H. Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case. The trial court cut the award to $120 million in November 2020, and on July 19, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department reversed outright and directed judgment for Johnson & Johnson, holding that the plaintiffs' medical expert never gave a scientific expression of the minimum lifetime exposure needed to cause the disease.
Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg led the trial team that won a $117 million verdict for Stephen Lanzo III, the first jury finding that Johnson & Johnson talc caused a plaintiff's mesothelioma. The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the judgment in April 2021 over inadmissible expert testimony, and no retrial or final resolution has been publicly reported since, with J&J's talc bankruptcy filings stalling the litigation for years.
A Boston jury awarded $43.1 million on October 12, 2018 to the widow and son of Louis Summerlin, a former brake mechanic and lifelong menthol smoker who died of lung cancer in 2015 at 73, finding R.J. Reynolds' Salem and Kool cigarettes defectively designed and the company guilty of fraud, while clearing Philip Morris and an auto parts distributor. Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Michael Shepard of Shepard Law. It was the first trial in the country to take a lung cancer claim to verdict against both tobacco and asbestos defendants, and the largest verdict in New England that year.
In the first consolidated multi-plaintiff talc trial, a Middlesex County jury awarded $37.3 million on September 11, 2019 to four people who developed mesothelioma after their parents powdered them with Johnson's Baby Powder as children, and a second jury added $750 million in punitive damages in February 2020, which Judge Ana Viscomi cut to $186.5 million under New Jersey's five-times cap. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Chris Placitella and Chris Panatier. On October 3, 2023 the Appellate Division reversed every judgment and ordered new trials, holding that the trial court had admitted three plaintiffs' experts without the gatekeeping New Jersey law requires.
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