Court Opinion

ID: 9860537
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:25:15.751346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:16:11.900646
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE LUND, concurring in part and dissenting in part: I dissent from only a limited part of the majority opinion. The issues discussed in that opinion illustrate the problems presented nationally with asbestos cases. Almost without exception, I believe the opinion is well reasoned and comes to correct conclusions. While concurring with the granting of a new trial, I find it necessary to discuss the proximate-cause issue as it relates to evidence of whether Manville asbestos was used in the UNARCO plant when plaintiffs were exposed. I am a panel member in Thacker v. UNR Industries, Inc. (1991), 213 Ill. App. 3d 38, where we initially decided that evidence of use of the Manville product was insufficient to sustain a finding of proximate cause. A petition for rehearing in Thacker was granted, and a decision on rehearing will be filed immediately following the filing of the opinion in the present case. We now conclude that our original decision, now technically a nullity, was in error. Thacker involved the same plant and some of the same time periods as in the present case. Proof of when the Man-ville product was used in the UNARCO plant is difficult to establish, due to the time period between employment of the various victims and the time illnesses were discovered. Old records have disappeared, and the ones that remain do not provide exact answers. After review, we now conclude that adequate evidence was presented in Thacker to sustain a finding that Manville asbestos was the proximate cause of the injury. It is not necessary to go into a lengthy description of the drift theory and how it establishes the strong possibility of fiber circulating throughout the plant. The evidence in Thacker indicated that during Thacker’s employment the largest amount of asbestos used by the plant, by far, came from companies other than Manville. However, Manville asbestos was used and necessarily resulted in additional fiber in the air flow. No one can say which kind of fiber or fibers contributed to the injury of employees. Considering the nature of asbestos and the knowledge by the asbestos industry of its dangerous propensities, a broad view toward liability should be taken. Defendants have acknowledged wilful and wanton conduct, and they should not be benefited by narrow or strict interpretation of proximate cause. In asbestos cases, where two or more companies contributed to asbestos fiber being in the air when and where an injured person was working, all should be held liable. I dissent in the present case on the issue of intervening- cause. I would hold that it has been established as a matter of law that suppliers of asbestos were aware of production methods used by those they supplied, and they were well aware of the dangerous propensity of the material. Because of this knowledge, I conclude that asbestos suppliers should not, as a matter of law, be allowed to claim an intervening cause as a defense based upon the manufacturing plant’s failure to provide adequate protection. A new cause can intervene or break the sequence between the original wrongful act and the injury, so that a cause of injury is traceable only to the intervening act. However, an intervening act will not prevent an original act from being a proximate cause of the injury, if the wrongful act extended in an unbroken sequence from the wrong to the injury and the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the wrongful act. (Berg v. New York Central R.R. Co. (1945), 391 Ill. 52, 64, 62 N.E.2d 676, 682.) The suppliers knew of the dangers of the asbestos, gave no warning of the dangers, and put the asbestos in the chain of commerce knowing how it was being used. The injury was a product of the unbroken sequence and was a natural and probable sequence of the supplier’s actions.