Opinion ID: 2549172
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Scapa's Balbos claim

Text: Scapa challenges the Court of Special Appeals's application of the frequency, regularity, proximity test, enunciated in Eagle-Picher v. Balbos, which is the common law evidentiary standard used for establishing substantial-factor causation in negligence cases alleging asbestos exposure. Balbos, 326 Md. 179, 213, 604 A.2d 445, 461 (1992) (holding that [t]he jury... could find that the decedent was frequently exposed to fibers from the Eagle 66 asbestos cement in the proximity of the engine room of ships where that product was regularly used.). Our task upon Scapa's challenge to the sufficiency of Mr. Saville's evidence, is to determine whether the intermediate appellate court's judgment upholding the trial court's dismissal of Scapa's motions for judgment and for JNOV on Mr. Saville's claims was in error. An appellate court reviews the trial court's decision to allow or deny judgment or JNOV to determine whether it was legally correct[,] Saville II, 190 Md. App. at 343, 988 A.2d at 1065 (citing Houghton v. Forrest, 183 Md.App. 15, 26, 959 A.2d 816, 823-24 (2008)), while viewing the evidence and the reasonable inferences to be drawn from it in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and determining whether the facts and circumstances only permit one inference with regard to the issue presented. See Md. Rule 2-519 (2010) (Motion for Judgment). We will find error in a denial of a motion for judgment or JNOV if the evidence does not rise above speculation, hypothesis, and conjecture, and does not lead to the jury's conclusion with reasonable certainty. Saville II, 190 Md.App. at 343, 988 A.2d at 1066 (quoting Bartholomee v. Casey, 103 Md.App. 34, 51, 651 A.2d 908 (1994)). Our resolution of this question in Scapa's favor would render the remaining questions moot, therefore, we address it first. In Balbos, we described how a court would assess whether the exposure of any given bystander to any particular supplier's product [would] be legally sufficient to permit a finding of substantial-factor causation, noting that: The finding involves the interrelationship between the use of a defendant's product at the workplace and the activities of the plaintiff at the workplace. This requires an understanding of the physical characteristics of the workplace and of the relationship between the activities of the direct users of the product and the bystander plaintiff. Within that context, the factors to be evaluated include the nature of the product, the frequency of its use, the proximity in distance and in time, of a plaintiff to the use of a product, and the regularity of the exposure of that plaintiff to the use of that product. Balbos, 326 Md. at 210, 604 A.2d at 460 (emphasis added and citations omitted). Relying on the Balbos frequency, regularity, proximity test, the Court of Special Appeals held that there was more than enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that [Mr. Saville] performed a significant amount of work on Scapa's product ... [that Mr. Saville] was significantly exposed to Scapa's product ... and that [the jury] did not contradict itself when it found [Scapa] liable and the [c]ross-[d]efendants not liable. Saville II, 190 Md.App. at 345-48, 988 A.2d at 1067-68. Therefore, it upheld the trial court's denial of the motions, finding sufficient proffered evidence, when viewed in a light most favorable to Mr. Saville, to generate a jury question on causation. Saville II, 190 Md.App. at 345-48, 988 A.2d at 1067-68. Scapa asserts that [t]he Court of Special Appeals's published opinion in Saville II stands for the proposition that a plaintiff in an asbestos product-liability case may reach the jury if he establishes the mere possibility of an undefined, unquantifiable exposure to asbestos[,] and that the intermediate appellate court's holding waters down the Balbos test. We disagree. Scapa raises five evidentiary gaps, which it asserts were fatal to Mr. Saville's negligence claim and made it impossible that a jury could have determined that the alleged injuries were caused by Scapa's dryer felts without resorting to an untenable chain of speculative inferences, namely: (1) no evidence on the amount of time Mr. Saville spent on the machine where Scapa's dryer felts were installed; (2) no evidence on his proximity to the second position of machine number 9 (No. 9 Machine) where Scapa's asbestos-containing felt indisputably ran; (3) no evidence on proximity of different machine positions to each other; (4) medical expert opinion testimony on the causation of Mr. Saville's mesothelioma based on assumed facts that were never proven at trial; and (5) no discernable evidence of the level of exposure to respirable asbestos fibers specifically caused by Scapa's felts.
When viewed in the light most favorable to Mr. Saville, however, the evidence that Mr. Saville regularly handled and/or worked in arm's length to Scapa's asbestos-containing felts on a daily basis for at least one year was legally sufficient to permit a jury question on proximate cause, and, therefore, the denials of Scapa's motions for judgment and JNOV were not in error. The frequency prong of the Balbos test addresses the frequency of use [of the product] in the plaintiff's workplace. Balbos, 326 Md. at 210, 604 A.2d at 460 (stating the factors to be evaluated include the nature of the product, the frequency of its use). Scapa's witness, Ivan Fearnhead, testified that Scapa provided 75 felts to the Westvaco Mill between 1964 and 1978, which ran on the No. 8 and No. 9 paper machines and that two of those felts contained asbestos. Mr. Saville testified that he was employed in the Eight and Nine Machine Room Building of the Westvaco Mill from 1968 until 1978, with a brief hiatus for educational leave from 1974 until 1976. Additionally, according to master cards [3] kept by Scapa, and submitted to the jury as Plaintiff's exhibits, Scapa provided two asbestos-containing dryer felts which ran on the second position of the No. 9 Machine from October 1969 until November 1970. Scapa contends that Mr. Saville presented no evidence on the time that he spent between machines No. 8 and No. 9, and that because Scapa's asbestos-containing felts were only on No. 9, the jury could only speculate about the frequency of his exposure to those felts. There was circumstantial evidence, however, that Mr. Saville did work on machine No. 9 by way of Mr. Shoemaker's video testimony that as Mr. Saville's cohort he worked on machine No. 8 during the same shift as Mr. Saville, both of them being headquartered in the dryer sections of their respective machines. Frequency, therefore, was addressed directly by the testimony of Ivan Fearnhead, which linked Scapa to asbestos-containing felts at Westvaco; by the master cards that established, with particularity, where those felts ran; as well as a co-worker's testimony on the logistics of the maintenance work. While not explicitly defined in Balbos or subsequent cases, regularity in the context of asbestos exposure indicates periodic exposure, i.e., something that happens at regular intervals. Balbos, 326 Md. at 213, 604 A.2d at 461 (involving a work-site where decedent was covered regularly with asbestos dust). Mr. Saville and co-worker, Mr. Shoemaker, testified that their duty as broke-hustlers [4] was to keep the six felts that ran on each of the No. 8 and No. 9 machines clean and running. Mr. Shoemaker testified that he scraped only on machine No. 8, leaving by reasonable inference, Mr. Saville scraped on machine No. 9 when the two were working on the same shift. Mr. Saville testified that at least once, and sometimes twice a day for about 10-20 minutes, the broke hustlers would scrape the dryer felts clean with a big blade while standing about an arm's length away from the moving felt. [5] Mr. Saville's testimony about the scraping process being hot and dusty was corroborated by Mr. Shoemaker's testimony that the scraped residue would fly in the area as opposed to building up on the surface of the scraping tool. [6] Mr. Saville and Mr. Shoemaker both testified that their work-sites were dusty from both the scraping and the blowing [7] of the felts. Testimony from Mr. Dennis Davidson, a former W & G employee, indicated that dust created from work on the asbestos-insulated pipes throughout the Eight and Nine Paper Machine Building would not be sucked through the ventilation system and would remain in the building, thus providing more circumstantial evidence that any dust containing asbestos fibers would remain in Mr. Saville's work-site. In addition, Mr. Saville testified that most of the scraping was done at the first section of the machine because that is where the sheet was the wettest and the scale or residue could be more easily scraped from the felt. Conflicting testimony was heard by the jury suggesting that the dryer felts would have to be changed, and therefore handled directly, every six months, but no less than every few years. While our review of the record uncovered contradictory accounts of the dustiness of the atmosphere, bearing on the likelihood of the existence of respirable asbestos fibers, it is not the province of an appellate court to weigh the evidence because the trier of fact, i.e., the jury and the jury only has the power to assess the weight of the evidence, a power which passes to the trial judge's discretion upon motion for a new trial. Owens-Corning v. Garrett, 343 Md. 500, 522, 682 A.2d 1143, 1153 (1996) (citing Weissman v. Hokamp, 171 Md. 197, 201, 188 A. 923, 925 (1937)). Collectively, the evidence presented supports Mr. Saville's periodic, i.e., regular, exposure to Scapa's asbestos-containing dryer felts and respirable asbestos fibers emanating from their upkeep, thus it was sufficient to warrant jury consideration. The last prong of the Balbos test requires evidence of the proximity of the plaintiff, in distance and in time, to the use of the product. Balbos, 326 Md. at 210, 604 A.2d at 460. Scapa contends that Mr. Saville presented no evidence that he was in the proximity of position two on the No. 9 machine, which is where the asbestos-containing dryer felts ran. Moreover, according to Scapa, Mr. Saville did not present evidence that positions one and two were in proximity to each other so that even if he was located in position one he would still be exposed to asbestos. The jury heard accounts of the size of the Eight and Nine Paper Machine Building from various witnesses, e.g., that is was the size of a city block, or a football field, or 150 yards, somewhere between three and five stories high, and 80 feet wide, while also hearing from Mr. Shoemaker that the broke hustlers worked in very close proximity, 10 to 30 feet away from one another. Therefore, while the (machine) building is very large, the work-site for each machine's broke hustler, i.e., the dryer sections of the No. 8 and No. 9 machines, were in relative proximity. Consequently, even if the evidence did show, through the master cards, that Scapa's asbestos-containing felts were only on the second section of the No. 9 machine, testimony from Scott Graham, in particular, indicated that the dryer cans upon which the felts ran were only a foot or a foot and a half apart. There is no direct evidence in the record of the precise distance between sections one and two of Machine No. 9. There is direct evidence, however, that Scapa's asbestos-containing dryer felts ran on section two of Machine No. 9 and circumstantial evidence that Mr. Saville worked on Machine No. 9 primarily at section one. An inference may be reasonably drawn, therefore, about the proximity of Mr. Saville to the asbestos-containing dryer felt, which was on his machine, but in a different section. Scapa contends that this collective evidence on frequency, regularity, and proximity was legally insufficient to require submission of the negligence case to the jury. Specifically, Scapa disagrees with the intermediate appellate court's application of its prior case, Reiter v. ACandS, 179 Md.App. 645, 947 A.2d 570 (2008), aff'd sub nom., Reiter v. Pneumo Abex, 417 Md. 57, 8 A.3d 725 (2010) to the instant case implying that if we affirm we will be endorsing the previously disavowed theories of market-share or fiber drift liability. We disagree. In Reiter, the widows of three deceased former employees of Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Sparrows Point facility appealed the decision of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City granting summary judgment in favor of Eaton Corporation, successor in interest to Cutler-Hammer, Inc., Pneumo Abex LLC, and Square D Company. The Court of Special Appeals and this Court affirmed that decision. The Court of Special Appeals held that the evidence and inferences, in a favorable light to the widows, would not permit a reasonable jury to conclude that the decedents' exposures to the companies' products were a substantial contributing cause of decedents' lung cancer. Reiter, 179 Md. App. at 662, 947 A.2d at 580. Specifically, relying on the requirements of the frequency, regularity and proximity test of Balbos, there was no evidence identifying] the dust as having come from the wear of the crane brake linings, and the main witness could not identify the suppliers of any brake linings used in the slab yard. Reiter, 179 Md.App. at 662-63, 947 A.2d at 580. As to one of the appellants, the intermediate appellate court noted that an inference on exposure would be speculation at best ... without evidence linking his exposure to dust generated by the wear of Square D brake linings. Reiter, 179 Md.App. at 665, 947 A.2d at 582. The appellant's problem in Reiter of linking a particular company's asbestos-containing products to the work-site of a claimant persisted on appeal to this Court, where we affirmed summary judgment holding that: Petitioners' evidence was sufficient to generate a jury issue on the question of whether (1) each decedent was exposed to asbestos dust at his workplace, and (2) Respondents manufactured some of the crane brake products used at the facility. We also conclude, however, that Petitioners' evidence was insufficient to establish that any of the Respondents' products were used at the specific site(s) where the Petitioners actually worked. Reiter v. Pneumo Abex, 417 Md. at 61, 8 A.3d at 727-28 (concluding, for example, that [e]vidence that some Square D products were used somewhere in the 480 acre tin mill does not establish that a Square-D product was on the crane that was in the 50 square feet where Mr. Reiter `actually worked.'). In addition to satisfying Balbos, a plaintiff must link the defendant to the product. See Reiter v. ACandS, 179 Md.App. at 665, 947 A.2d at 582 (citing Lee v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 721 F.Supp. 89, 93 (1989)) (Maryland courts apply traditional products liability law which requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant manufactured the product which allegedly caused the injury.). We affirm the intermediate appellate court's judgment on the trial court's rulings in the instant case, which is consistent with our recent decision in Reiter, quoted supra. There is more evidence in the instant case than there was in Reiter, that Scapa's asbestos-containing dryer felt frequently ran on a machine for which Mr. Saville was responsible for a particular kind of maintenance because it was used daily, at least for the period of one year, in proximity to Mr. Saville's workstation on the No. 9 machine, where he would periodically either directly handle the asbestos-containing felt or be exposed to dust emanating from the scraping and blowing clean-up procedures. The inferences that were found too speculative in Reiter do not arise in this case because of the amount of testimonial and circumstantial evidence placing the asbestos-containing dryer felts within an arm's length of Mr. Saville's work-site. At oral argument, before this Court, the parties were unsure whether the evidence of Mr. Saville's exposure to Scapa's asbestos-containing dryer felts was circumstantial or direct, a distinction that is immaterial because circumstantial evidence of exposure will suffice. See Saville II, 190 Md.App. at 345-46, 988 A.2d at 1067 (concluding that there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that [Mr. Saville] performed a significant amount of work on Scapa's product.); Balbos, 326 Md. at 210, 604 A.2d at 460 (Exposure, however, may be established circumstantially.) (citing Roehling v. National Gypsum Co. Gold Bond Bldg. Products, 786 F.2d 1225, 1228 (4th Cir.1986)) (The evidence, circumstantial as it may be, need only establish that [plaintiff] was in the same vicinity as witnesses who can identify the products causing the asbestos dust that all people in that area, not just the product handlers, inhaled.); see also Lohrmann v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp., 782 F.2d 1156, 1162-63 (4th Cir.1986) (To support a reasonable inference of substantial causation from circumstantial evidence, there must be evidence of exposure to a specific product on a regular basis over some extended period of time in proximity to where the plaintiff actually worked.). Our holding on this sufficiency of evidence question is not as emphatically stated as the Court of Special Appeals's holding because we conclude that the evidence was sufficient to survive the motions, but decline to state that the evidence conclusively established proximity as a matter of law. C.f. Saville II, 190 Md.App. at 346, 988 A.2d at 1067 (Unlike Reiter, the evidence in this case conclusively established that plaintiff worked in close proximity to Scapa's asbestos-containing felt for a significant period of time, leaving him covered in dust.). Nonetheless, the Court of Special Appeals did not err in affirming the denial of Petitioner's motions for judgment and JNOV on Mr. Saville's claims, nor did that court misapply or misinterpret the rigors of the Balbos test.