Oakland Jury Awards $20M to Plaintiff in Asbestos Suit
SF Daily Journal April 16,2001 – Peter Blumberg

The Damages are primarily compensatory for the former pipe worker now diagnosed with terminal cancer.

A 61-year-old man diagnosed with terminal cancer from exposure to asbestos has been awarded
$20.5 million by an Alameda County jury.

The jury concluded Thursday that Stockton based J-M A/C Pipe Corp. acted negligently in not protecting workers from lethal asbestos dust during the 1980s.

The jury was unanimous in finding that the defendant acted maliciously and with conscious disregard for workers’ health, according to plaintiffs’ attorney Dianna Lyons, of Kazan, McClain, Edises, Simon and Abrams in Oakland.

Lyons said the compensatory damages of $10 million apiece to Bill Hardcastle and his wife, and $500,000 in punitive damages, is the largest asbestos damage award for an individual injury in the 25 years that her firm has specialized in asbestos litigation.

It was not clear Friday if the award is the largest of its kind in northern California, which has been a hotbed of asbestos litigation since the 1970s.

According to a statement from Lyons’ office, Hardcastle worked in pipe manufacturing from 1959 until last year, when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare and terminal cancer caused by asbestos.

Hardcastle produced asbestos-containing cement pipe for the first 15 years of his career and was then reassigned to plastic pipe operations out of concern for his health.

But the cement and plastic pipe operations continued to share space in the same building with only partial walls separating them.

At trial, former plant workers testified manufacturing processes were “dusty and dirty” and Hardcastle was continuously exposed to the dust while at work in the plastic pipe manufacturing business, the firm said.

One co-worker testified about “nearly suffocating” from the dust while another likened it to “a pickup truck on a dirt road. Plaintiffs’ witnesses also testified that the company orchestrated clean-ups of the building when air samples were taken to check compliance with health and safety regulations.

Lawyers for the defendant were unavailable for comment Friday.