Asbestos caused diseases, judge rules
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Eleven families from Manville won default judgments against the company that supplied asbestos to Johns-Manville from the 1950s into the 1980s.
Verdicts totaling $90.5 million in 11 mesothelioma death cases — including a mother and daughter – were rendered in Superior Court of Middlesex County after years of litigation and a week of hearings before Judge Ana C. Viscomi.
The families — represented by the law firms of Levy Konigsberg and Szaferman Lakind — sued Anova Holding AG and Becon AG for the asbestos that they sold to Johns-Manville and which proximately caused their mesotheliomas, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.
Johns-Manville was the largest manufacturer of products containing asbestos, said attorney Leah Kagan. Facing claims, the company voluntarily filed for bankruptcy in 1982 and closed down in 1986; the Manville plant was torn down and eventually cleaned up as a federal Superfund site. It was situated approximately where the Marketplace mall and Adesa Auto Auction are today.
"This town was systematically poisoned by this plant," said Ms. Kagan. Everyone in town wanted a job at the plant, she said — a true company town — but didn’t realize the danger.
None of the so-called victims of mesothelioma are alive today, but the cases was brought by their spouses and families.
Each of the families were awarded amounts that varied from $2.5 million to $15 million, based on the number of years relatives worked at the plant, said Ms. Kagan.
It’s unknown how long it will take before money will actually come to the families from two Swiss-based companies, Anova and Beacon.
Because the defendants are foreign companies, the lawyers for the families utilized the procedures of international treaties to serve Anova and Becon with the complaints.
Neither Anova nor Becon appeared or answered the complaints, and the plaintiffs successfully obtained default judgments against these companies, and again served them with notice of the scheduled proof hearings through the Hague Convention procedures.
Starting on June 20 hearings were held to award damages to these families. The families were represented at the hearings by Ms. Kagan and Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg. Testimony of the mesothelioma victims, their families and expert witnesses concluded on June 26. After deliberating on the evidence, the court awarded damages to each family for the pain and suffering of the mesothelioma victims and loss of consortium to their spouses.
Being able to find and hold responsible the correct responsible parties "is a victory unto itself," said Ms. Kagan. Because Johns-Manville is bankrupts, there is no viable entity from which to recover, she said.
Anova and Beacon supplied the naturally occurring raw asbestos fiber that the plant used to make products like water and sewer pipe, pipe covering, roof shingles and floor tile. It was considered very durable, fire resistant and cheap, Ms. Kagan said, but dangerous to workers’ health, it was ultimately shown. Once government put controls to protect workers in the 1960s and ’70s, it wasn’t cost-effective, she said.
According to Ms. Kagan, "These families have suffered horribly at the hands of companies like Anova and Becon, and we are proud to represent them in their brave and unrelenting quest for justice."
Anova Holding, AG and Becon, AG are successor companies to the Eternit empire, which mined asbestos in South Africa primarily, and sold it throughout the world, including to the Johns-Manville Company.
According to a statement from the law firm, in 2012, two executives from Eternit, family heir Stephan Schmidheiny and Swiss billionaire Baron Louis de Cartier de Marchienne, were convicted in a highly publicized criminal trial in Turin, Italy for their mining and sale of asbestos. They were held responsible for the deaths of almost 3,000 people.
Levy Konigsberg is a nationally recognized trial law firm specializing in the representation of mesothelioma and other asbestos cancer victims.