DYING PLANT WORKER AWARDED $20,500,000

OAKLAND. On April 12, 2001. Bill and Vonda Hardcastle were awarded $20,500,000 by an Alameda County jury in California. Bill Hardcastle contracted a rare cancer which he alleged was caused by the asbestos released at his workplace by the manufacture of asbestos-cement pipe. The defendant was J-M AC Pipe Co. of Stockton, California.

Bill Hardcastle was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare, invariably fatal cancer, involving the lining of the abdominal cavity in early 2000. The only known cause of mesothelioma is asbestos. The doctors all agreed that Bill Hardcastle's cancer was caused by his asbestos exposure at work.

Bill Hardcastle worked from 1959 until his cancer diagnosis, at a pipe manufacturing plant in Stockton, California. His original employer was Johns-Manville Corporation. From 1959-1974 Bill Hardcastle was involved in the production of asbestos-containing pipe which at the time was primarily used for water transmission. In 1974, out of concern for his health, Bill Hardcastle transferred to the plastic pipe operations which were conducted in a shop in one corner of a huge building "three football fields" long, fifty feet wide and 40-50 feet high, with only partial walls separating the plastic pipe manufacturing operation from the asbestos cement pipe production in the rest of the facility.

In 1982, Johns-Manville sold the Stockton operations to companies with ties to Formosa Plastic Co. J-M Manufacturing Inc. bought the plastic pipe operations and became Bill Hardcastle's employer. J-M A/C Pipe Corporation purchased the asbestos-cement pipe portion of the business and continued the operations in shared facilities.

At trial, former plant workers testified that J-M A/C Pipe's manufacturing processes were dusty and dirty and that Mr. Hardcastle was continuously exposed to the dust while at work in the plastic pipe manufacturing business that occupied the huge building's Southwest corner. J-M A/C Pipe claimed that air monitoring proved that the company complied with work place asbestos dust regulations. Workers testified to advance notice of visitors such as air-monitoring teams or visits from "VIPs" or student tour groups, said they frequently worked overtime to clean up the day before any air monitoring was done, and testified that the dustiest operations were shut down entirely until after the air-samples were taken.

Experts testified at trial that during the 1980's J-M A/C Pipe knew that there was no safe level of asbestos exposure and that even if they hadn't cheated on air quality testing with advance clean-up operations, their own standards were too lenient to protect workers' health.

Dianna Lyons, one of the Hardcastles' trial attorneys said, "The jury heard evidence from Bill and Vonda Hardcastle who have shared their lives since they were 15, raised four fine children and are the proud grandparents of eight grandchildren, and from workers who were there when JM A/C Pipe Corporation continued making asbestos cement pipe after nearly every other U.S. company took asbestos out of its products." Workers such as Brad Sparks testified to "nearly suffocating in asbestos dust." Jesse Ramsey described dust levels "like a pick-up truck on a dirt road: and said there "was dust all over that building. You couldn't get away from it." Ramsey also testified to frequent malfunctioning in the vacuum system that the defendant claimed protected the workers from lethal asbestos dust.

The jury, according to Frank Fernandez, also Hardcastles' trial counsel, "unanimously found that J-M A/C Pipe Corporation acted maliciously and with conscious disregard for workers' health and that the resulting asbestos dust caused terminal injury to Bill Hardcastle and exposed hundreds of other workers to extraordinary risk. All in the pursuit of profit."

The jury was unanimous in finding J-M A/C Pipe negligent and its actions malicious. They awarded Bill and Vonda Hardcastle $10,000,000 each as compensatory damages. After hearing financial information about the defendants net worth of $1.1 million the jury also awarded $500,000 in punitive damages.

J-M A/C Pipe Corporation claimed it had never been sued in an asbestos case before, but apparently forgot that our firm sued the company as successor to the old Johns Manville Corporation in 1983 after it bought and continued to operate Johns Manville's asbestos cement pipe operation. The Bankruptcy Court halted that law suit which sought to hold J-M A/C Pipe liable for the predecessor Johns Manville Corporation's negligence. The Hardcastle lawsuit involved J-M A/C Pipe's own negligence in continuing the manufacture of pipe containing lethal crocidolite asbestos until July, 1987.