Mesothelioma Verdict From Childhood Asbestos Exposure Affirmed by Maryland's Highest Court

Shortly after Lisa Pransky's family moved into their Montgomery County, Maryland home in 1972, her father, a heating and air conditioning contractor, decided to convert the unfinished basement into a recreation room. Working evenings and weekends, sometimes with help from a carpenter, he put up studs, nailed on drywall, and taped the seams. To finish the joints he applied a joint compound manufactured and distributed by Georgia-Pacific Corporation, then sanded it smooth. He also used the compound on the ceiling to create a stippled texture.

Lisa was eight years old at the time. She never handled the compound herself, but she was frequently in the basement while her father worked, either watching him or helping her mother with the laundry. The sanding threw off heavy dust, and the house's ventilation system carried it through the home. After the renovation was finished, Lisa kept playing in the basement and continued to be exposed to dust shedding from the compound on the ceiling for roughly another decade, until she left home for college about a decade later.

Mesothelioma has a latency period of 20 years or longer from first exposure to the onset of symptoms. Lisa developed symptoms in 1997, about 25 years after the renovation, and was diagnosed with mesothelioma. She sued Georgia-Pacific along with her husband in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. At trial, Georgia-Pacific argued that her disease was not caused by its joint compound at all, but by unusually high ambient asbestos levels in her neighborhood. The jury rejected that defense and, finding that her childhood exposure to the compound's dust was a substantial factor in causing her mesothelioma, awarded Lisa and her husband $9,188,000. Of that total, $4,800,000 was for her non-economic damages; the balance covered her economic losses and her husband's claim.

Lisa Pransky died of mesothelioma at age 34, shortly after the trial concluded.

Georgia-Pacific appealed twice. It argued first that the evidence of causation was insufficient because Lisa had never handled its product directly, making her a bystander rather than a direct user. The Court of Appeals of Maryland rejected that argument, applying its earlier bystander-exposure ruling in Eagle-Picher Industries v. Balbos and holding that the medical evidence of her dust exposure was legally sufficient to support the verdict. Georgia-Pacific also argued that Maryland's 1986 statutory cap on non-economic damages should have limited the award. The court held that the cap did not apply because Lisa's exposure to the compound ended before July 1, 1986, the cap's effective date, and her cause of action arose at that earlier time under Maryland law.

The Court of Special Appeals had already affirmed the judgment, and on June 11, 2002, the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the state's highest court, affirmed again. The full $9,188,000 verdict stood. Michael B. Leh of Greitzer & Locks, the Philadelphia firm that later became Locks Law Firm, represented the Pranskys on appeal along with Melvin J. Sykes, Stephen W. Wilson, and Stephen J. Nolan.