Source: https://www.defenselitigationinsider.com/author/clapin/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 13:17:13+00:00

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As an associate in MG+M's Miami office, Cory D. Lapin practices high-exposure complex litigation. He has significant experience in areas such as medical malpractice, products liability, mass torts, and catastrophic injury litigation.
The Supreme Court’s May 14, 2018, decision in Murphy v. NCAA was focused on sports betting, however, the case at its core served as a stress test on the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty. No. 16-476, 2018 WL 2186168 (U.S. May 14, 2018). Constitutional law prohibits the federal government from “commandeering,” or compelling the states to take regulatory action that the Tenth Amendment would otherwise reserve to them. In Murphy v. NCAA, consolidated with its companion case, New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, Inc. v. NCAA (referred to herein collectively as “Murphy”), the Supreme Court held that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) violates the anti-commandeering doctrine. Id. at *20. Its decision not only allows states to legalize sports betting, but if applied broadly, could be construed as conferring substantially more power on states, in general, on issues ranging from gun control to legalization of marijuana.
When the original states declared their independence from England, they did so with an aim toward dual sovereignty — granting sovereign powers to both the federal government and the states. Consistent with dual sovereignty, the framers etched into the Constitution that Congress cannot issue orders directly to the states. The addition of the Tenth Amendment solidified this basic premise by declaring, “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The anti-commandeering doctrine represents the recognition of this limit on congressional authority.
Before 2018, the anti-commandeering doctrine had only been addressed twice by the Supreme Court. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 166 (1992); Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997). In New York, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that ordered the state to regulate in accordance with federal standards. Similarly, in Printz, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that compelled state officers to enforce federal law.
In both opinions, the Supreme Court explained that the Constitution “confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States.” New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 166 (1992). “No Member of the Court ha[d] ever suggested” that even “a particularly strong federal interest” “would enable Congress to command a state government to enact state regulation.” Id. at 178 (emphasis in original). “We have always understood that even where Congress has the authority under the Constitution to pass laws requiring or prohibiting certain acts, it lacks the power directly to compel the States to require or prohibit those acts.” Id. at 166.
On August 30, 2016, a Miami-Dade jury awarded Richard Batchelor and his wife more than $21 million after finding that his mesothelioma arose, in part, from asbestos exposure during overhaul work at a Florida Power & Light Co. (FP+L) power plant. On December 27, 2017, the Third District Court of Appeal erased the verdict against defendant Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel), finding that the jury should never have considered claims against that defendant because of plaintiffs’ insufficient evidence. The appellate court also found reversible error in an adverse inference instruction, and concluded that Bechtel’s efforts to locate discoverable information were reasonable under the circumstances.
One of the contractors retained to provide ongoing maintenance services of the equipment on site was defendant Bechtel. The contracts provided that FP&L would issue work orders at its discretion to Bechtel, which would do the work requested on a cost-plus basis. FP&L decided whether FP&L or Bechtel would provide needed supplies, equipment, and ancillary services. During the relevant time period, Bechtel provided 1,050,070 man hours of services at Turkey Point.
FP&L periodically shut down the units for repair and maintenance. During these shutdowns, FP&L had Bechtel perform major overhauls on the units. FP&L also had another contractor, Foster Wheeler, perform maintenance on the unit’s giant boilers, which were lined with insulation. Although other contractors were present most of the time, Bechtel received work instructions only from FP&L.
Since 2004, the Florida Supreme Court has examined a series of objections raised by defendants to avoid producing records of “adverse medical incidents.” In each case, the Court has found that Amendment 7 to the Florida Constitution, which grants broad rights of record access to medical patients, abrogates any Florida statute that would otherwise prohibit discovery, including statutes that previously exempted from discovery any records of investigations, proceedings, and/or peer review panels. Undaunted, defendants have continued to object to Amendment 7 discovery requests, using new and refined theories in response to each court decision. On October 26, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court appeared to have put an end to many of these creative defense tactics in Edwards v. Thomas.
In 2004, the citizens of Florida voted to amend the Florida Constitution to allow nearly unfettered access to records of “adverse medical incidents.” This amendment, commonly referred to as Amendment 7, entitles any patient to records related to a health care facility’s “medical negligence, intentional misconduct, and any other act, neglect, or default that caused or could have caused injury to or death of a patient.” The stated purpose of the amendment was to “lift the shroud of secrecy from records of adverse medical incidents and make them widely available” because such records “may be important to a patient.” Although a lawsuit does not need to be filed to access these records, the issue seems particularly germane in medical negligence actions.
Before Amendment 7, Florida statutory law prohibited discovery of records of adverse medical incidents, which gave defendant hospitals a distinct advantage over medical negligence plaintiffs. These records tend to shed light on what a defendant hospital knew about the qualifications of attending physicians, the adequacy of its policies and procedures, and its own analysis of the particular medical incident at issue. After Amendment 7’s enactment, extensive litigation has sought to define the amendment’s scope, primarily with regard to what health care facilities can withhold from requesting patients, culminating in the opinion in Edwards v. Thomas.
Some courts apply a bright-line rule, holding that a bare-metal product manufacturer is never liable for asbestos-related injuries, while other courts assess the foreseeability that hazardous asbestos materials would be added to the manufacturer’s bare-metal product. The Supreme Court has not yet addressed this issue, and neither had the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, until October 3, 2017, in In re: Asbestos Products Liability Litigation (No. VI).
What is the “Bare-metal Defense”?
In simplest terms, the “bare-metal defense” contends that equipment manufacturers are not liable for the potential hazards of asbestos-related injuries, when the source of the asbestos exposure comes from aftermarket replacement component parts or insulation that the equipment manufacturer neither manufactured nor placed into the stream of commerce. Some courts have applied the defense when considering causation, concluding that the bare-metal manufacturer was not the proximate cause of an asbestos-related injury. Others courts have analyzed similar issues when evaluating whether a bare-metal manufacturer had a duty to act with reasonable care with respect to reasonably foreseeable asbestos-related risks. Although slightly different, both analyses hinge upon foreseeability.
The Third Circuit addressed the application of the “bare-metal defense,” and in particular, whether to use a bright-line rule or a fact-specific standard, in a maritime negligence claim.
Two widows of former Navy servicemen alleged that their husbands were exposed to asbestos from insulation and other components that were added onto engines, pumps, boilers, and other equipment manufactured by defendants. Many of the defendants made their products “bare-metal” and without any asbestos-containing insulation, which was later added. These same defendants asserted the “bare-metal defense” and were granted summary judgment by the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, because they shipped their products without asbestos-containing insulation and therefore could not be liable for asbestos-related injuries.
Recently, in Sawyer v. Foster Wheeler LLC, the Fourth Circuit held that a government contractor is entitled to federal jurisdiction, even in product liability failure-to-warn actions, based on the contractor’s assertion that it has a colorable federal defense of government contractor immunity. 860 F.3d 249 (4th Cir. 2017). The big takeaway from this case, however, is that the Fourth Circuit has now joined the Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits in holding that a government contractor need not demonstrate that it attempted to provide a warning, but was prohibited from doing so by the government. Id.; see Cuomo v. Crane Co., 771 F.3d 113 (2nd Cir. 2014); Papp v. Fore-Kast Sales Co., Inc., 842 F.3d 805 (3d Cir. 2016); Zeringue v. Crane Company, 846 F.3d 785 (5th Cir. 2017); Ruppel v. CBS Corp., 701 F.3d 1176 (7th Cir. 2012); Leite v. Crane Co., 749 F.3d 1117 (9th Cir. 2014). Instead, for the government contractor defense to apply, the contractor is only required to establish that the government dictated or approved the warnings the contractor actually provided.
Sawyer involved the claims of a decedent’s family against Foster Wheeler LLC in Maryland state court, in which they alleged that the decedent’s death was caused by exposure to asbestos while he assembled Foster Wheeler boilers for use aboard Navy vessels in the boiler shop of the Sparrows Point Shipyard, and that the defendants failed to warn him of the dangers associated with asbestos exposure. Sawyer, 860 F.3d at 249. Foster Wheeler removed the case to federal district court based on federal officer jurisdiction conferred as a result of its government contractor defense. Following plaintiffs’ motion, the district court remanded the case and Foster Wheeler appealed. Id.
In support of federal officer jurisdiction, Foster Wheeler asserted that it manufactured boilers for the Navy under the Navy’s strict specifications and that “in the manufacture and sale of boilers and auxiliary equipment for the Navy, including all aspects of warnings associated with that equipment, [it] was acting under an officer or agency of the United States.” Id. In support, Foster Wheeler supplied the affidavits of a former employee and a retired Navy captain, in which they attested: (1) Foster Wheeler designed boilers to match highly detailed ship and military specifications provided by the Navy, that “deviations from these specifications were not acceptable,” and the Navy exercised “intense direction and control over all written documentation to be delivered with its naval boilers;” and (2) “the Navy was well aware of the health hazards associated with the use of asbestos from the early 1920s,” and that the Navy’s information “with respect to the specification and use of asbestos, and the health hazards associated with its use aboard Navy vessels, far exceeded any information that possibly could have been provided by a boiler manufacturer.” Id.

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