Opinion ID: 1658371
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Carter v. Avondale Shipyards, Inc

Text: Carter v. Avondale Shipyards, Inc., 415 So.2d 174 (La.1982) does not resolve the issue presented by this case. Carter was a contest between two successive employers to determine, as between the employers, whether liability for a worker's occupational disease should be imposed on one employer or apportioned between employers. After initially deciding that liability for compensation benefits should be apportioned between employers whose employments were causative factors in the development of the employee's disease, this court vacated that decision on rehearing, and found that the final employer, Avondale, was solely responsible because it had failed to prove that the employment by the previous employer, Dibert, Bancroft & Ross, had been a causative factor. In dicta, this court suggested that responsibility for compensation of occupational disease victims should be placed only on employers of the worker at the time the disease `manifested itself' and `disabled' the worker. Carter v. Avondale Shipyards, Inc., supra, p. 181. Consequently, this court in dicta may have expressed a preference for the last injurious exposure rule in resolving disputes between successive employers over liability for an employee's progressive occupational disease. However, the court was not called upon to decide, and did not decide even in dicta, whether an employee may hold each successive employer whose employment of him was a causative factor in the development of his occupational disease solidarily liable for workers' compensation.