Will Illinois asbestos legal industry start to blow away?
Editor’s comment: One of the strangest things for any legal observer to learn is tiny Madison County in the Metro-East area north of St. Louis has a legal docket devoted solely to asbestos claims. Plaintiff attorneys come from all over the United States and the world to file claims. On any given month, the Madison County asbestos docket has about 400 pages of pending claims!
Last week, the Illinois Supreme Court may have forever changed the long-standing asbestos evidence rule that has been a thorn in the side of all Defendants. In their ruling, our highest court reversed the 1987 Lipke rule barring defendants in asbestos cases from introducing evidence of Plaintiff’s other exposures. Illinois is the only state in the country to have had a rule like Lipke.
“As the instant cause presents a factually different situation, Lipke is inappropriate,” Justice Charles Freeman wrote, delivering the majority opinion ruling for the defendant in the 2004 case Nolan v. Weil-McLain. The court’s vote was five to one, with Justice Thomas Kilbride dissenting.
“In our view, Lipke stands for no more than the well-settled rules that it cites: that the concurrent negligence of others does not relieve a negligent defendant from liability,” Freeman wrote. “Lipke simply determines that evidence of the plaintiff’s other exposures was not relevant to the specific defense raised, i.e., that the plaintiff did not have an asbestos-related disease, and that he had no exposure whatsoever to the defendant’s asbestos products. In the matter at bar, however, the defendant wishes to offer evidence of the decedent’s other exposures for different purposes.”
On his website, www.icjl.org Ed Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League (ICJL), applauded the court’s decision.
“By striking down the arbitrary provisions of Lipke – the ruling that made it impossible for Illinois judges to grant a fair trial to defendants – the Supreme Court is improving the legal environment in Illinois and, finally, allowing Defendants to actually present their side of the case at trial.” Murnane feels the justices have rejected the “wholesale nature of condemning hundreds of defendants,” with the Nolan ruling.
“Today, the Court has embraced the idea that defendants dragged usually into the Madison County courthouse in Edwardsville, many named thousands of times over the past decade for products that provided very minor or little exposure to plaintiffs, actually deserve a fair day in court with rules that aren’t predisposed against them.” Murnane wrote.
Weil-McLain, an Indiana boilermaker, argued the trial court erred in applying Lipke in the suit brought by Plaintiff Nolan on behalf of her deceased husband. A jury originally awarded Nolan over $2.3 million in damages and the verdict had been upheld by the appellate court. The case will now be returned to the circuit court for a new trial.
At the time, even the original trial judge, Vermilion Circuit Court Judge Craig DeArmond, expressed doubts about Lipke. DeArmond has said that he did not feel the law and science were “in sync.”
The ruling is on the web at: http://www.state.il.us/court/Opinions/SupremeCourt/2009/April/103137.pdf.
