Determining When an Asbestos Injury Has Occurred
Because of the nature of asbestos-related diseases and the way victims contract them, injury cases involving asbestos can be complicated. Lengthy exposure to asbestos in Louisiana and the long latency, or development, of asbestos-caused diseases take these cases outside the realm of typical personal injury cases. While this framework is not perfect, it still provides asbestos victims an avenue to seek compensation for their injuries.
In the case of Cole v. Celotex, 599 So.2d 1058 (1992), the Louisiana Supreme Court recognized the difficulty of applying pure tort - or personal injury - principles to asbestos cases and handed down several important rules for asbestos injury cases coming after it. By reviewing the Court's analysis of when, legally speaking, an asbestos injury actually occurs, it is our hope that you can better understand the issues involved and how you might be able to receive compensation for any damages you face because of exposure. What's more, determining the legal timeframe is critical, as timing can affect both a plaintiff's right to file suit as well as the law that applies to the case.
The plaintiffs in the Cole case had all been exposed to asbestos during the course of their job duties. They brought suit seeking compensation from several manufacturers of asbestos-containing products. They also sued their former employers, claiming that the employers' negligence and failure to create a safe work environment contributed to the plaintiffs' injuries due to asbestos exposure.
After several appeals, the case landed in the Louisiana Supreme Court. The Court was asked to address several specific issues. Before tackling those, however, the Court had to confront an essential issue of determining the legal timeframe in which an asbestos injury occurs. The Court recognized that this is one aspect of tort law that does not operate well in asbestos cases. In its ruling, the Court stated
"Simply put, the requisites for asserting a [tort] cause of action are 'a wrongful act and resulting damages.' The problem with the suggested approach, however, is that the concepts upon which it is based were designed for handling traditional tort suits, and those concepts are inept for identifying the key 'events' giving rise to a cause of action for long-term exposure to asbestos in the workplace."Cole, 599 So.2d at 1065.
The Court continued, citing some federal court decisions:
"The factual predicate giving rise to potential liability from asbestos exposure is simply different from those that generated most tort doctrines [and] thus such cases differ in legally important aspects from the types of injuries that present tort doctrines were designed to accommodate." Id.
Because of both the "slow development" of asbestos-caused diseases and the "lengthy latency period" typical of most, there is a "temporal separation" between a defendant's injurious conduct and the appearance of a plaintiff's injury. That separation is somewhat unique to asbestos injury cases. In a car accident injury, for example, the injury, the act that causes the injury, and the moment at which those occur are readily evident. In contrast, the characteristics noted by the Court - slow development and latency - make determining the date of an asbestos injury "virtually impossible, medically and legally." Id. at 1066.
Regardless of the difficultly of "pinpointing" the exact time of an asbestos injury, the Court recognized that the timing of the injury affects several aspects of a case. Thus, it concluded:
"The key relevant events giving rise to a claim in long-latency occupational disease cases are the repeated tortious exposures resulting in continuous, on-going damages, although the disease may not be considered contracted or manifested until later." Id.
Thus, instead of trying to identify a single act that led to the injury, the Court was willing to accept the whole range of injurious conduct. While that seems like a straightforward and common-sense approach, it is still important to have the rule state as much.
Because relevant aspects of the law had changed during the time period involved in the Cole case, determining the time the injury occurred was essential to determining which law applied. Also, the Court discussed how the rules of prescription must be relaxed to accommodate long-latency diseases, an aspect dealing with the time a plaintiff has to bring a lawsuit. Make sure to return to this blog in the coming days for more information on this topic or click over to our section dedicated to mesothelioma and asbestos for more information.
