He Worked Forty to Sixty-Five Feet From the Sandblasting for a Decade. The Sand Arrived Without a Warning About Breathing It.
After trial: Affirmed in part and final. Judgment was entered November 28, 2012 for $1,095,000, which includes $500,000 in punitive damages, plus 8 percent post-judgment interest. The Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment on August 23, 2016 (No. 2013-CA-01296-COA) but vacated and remanded the separate award of $212,312.50 in attorneys' fees, so that amount is excluded from the figure here. The Mississippi Supreme Court granted certiorari on May 18, 2017 and then dismissed the writ as unnecessary, leaving the Court of Appeals disposition intact. Note that punitive damages are not subject to the noneconomic cap in Miss. Code Ann. 11-1-60, which is why the $500,000 punitive award survived whole. The jury apportioned 35 percent of the fault to Valley.
Won by Porter & Malouf, P.A..
Howard Barnett worked for a decade at Mississippi Steel and Iron, forty to sixty-five feet from sandblasting operations, in conditions he and a coworker both called extremely dusty. He developed silicosis. The claim was that the silica sand was defective because it came without adequate warnings about the danger of inhaling it.
What happened
From roughly 1960 to 1970 Howard Barnett worked for Mississippi Steel and Iron Company. His job put him forty to sixty-five feet from sandblasting operations, in conditions he and a coworker both described as extremely dusty.
Silica sand supplied by Mississippi Valley Silica Company was one of the two brands used in that sandblasting.
Barnett developed silicosis, a permanent scarring of the lungs caused by breathing silica dust, and he sued. The specific failure alleged was not that the sand was contaminated or the wrong grade. It was that the sand was defective because it arrived without adequate warnings and instructions about the danger of inhaling silica.
Barnett died while the suit was pending, and his widow Dorothy Barnett was substituted, suing individually and on behalf of all his wrongful-death heirs.
The case went to trial against Valley alone. The jury found for Dorothy Barnett on both economic and noneconomic damages and apportioned 35 percent of the fault to Valley. In a second phase it returned $500,000 in punitive damages.
Judgment was entered on November 28, 2012 for $1,095,000 including the punitive award, plus 8 percent post-judgment interest, along with $212,312.50 in attorneys' fees.
On August 23, 2016 the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment but vacated the attorneys' fee award and remanded that piece, so the fees did not stand. The Mississippi Supreme Court granted certiorari in May 2017 and then dismissed the writ, finding no need for further review.
This is the smallest entry in our Mississippi set and it earns its place for a specific reason: it is the only silica or asbestos-dust verdict in the state we could find that actually survived appellate review. Every other one in that docket was reversed.
Dorothy Barnett was represented by Patrick Malouf and Timothy W. Porter of Porter and Malouf, with Robert Allen Smith Jr., John Timothy Givens and David Neil McCarty on the appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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