Family Prevails in Appeal of Mesothelioma Dismissal
Years after losing their loved one to malignant pleural mesothelioma, a Connecticut family is one step closer to getting justice from the company they blame for his death after an appellate court reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss their claim. At issue was the question of whether an employer that ignored employee health could evade responsibility by pointing to workers’ compensation as an exclusive remedy.
Mesothelioma Claim Details Filthy Conditions in Factory
When Harold Dusto’s family filed their original personal injury lawsuit, they detailed the mesothelioma victim’s thirty-plus years of work for Rogers Corporation in its Manchester, Connecticut plastics factory. The company produced an industrial plastic that contained both chrysotile and crocidolite asbestos and did such a poor job of maintaining their environment that in 1972, an industrial hygienist wrote, “In general, Rogers Corporation Manchester was a real mess. Their housekeeping and attitude of the foremen as well as the hourly people left a lot to be desired in the area of environmental control.”
Despite this, the company had dismissed concerns about the risk of mesothelioma and called the asbestos that contaminated their work environment as a “nuisance dust.” Mr. Dusto died in 2019, five months after being diagnosed with the rare, asbestos-related disease, and when his family filed suit against the company, their case was dismissed based on a statute that limited workplace injury remedies to the worker compensation system.
Mesothelioma Victim’s Family Wins Reversal of Dismissal Decision
In their appeal of the dismissal of their earlier mesothelioma claim, the Dusto family asserted that Rogers Corporation’s management knew that his illness was “substantially certain to occur. They argued that the company’s consistent failure to meet OSHA standards and its persistent and active acts of deception towards its employees created an exception to the workers’ compensation exclusive remedy rule.
In support of their argument, the family provided industry-wide correspondence and other proof that the company knew of the risk of mesothelioma. The appellate court agreed, returning the mesothelioma case to the state’s civil trial system.
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