Court Opinion

ID: 9667116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:35:58.635085+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:35.058700
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur wholeheartedly in the principal opinion’s conclusions that the plaintiffs failed to make a submissible case against Owens-Illinois and Fibreboard. However, I believe the principal opinion errs in remanding the case against Fibreboard for a new trial. A remand in this case is not required.
The plaintiffs filed their case May 18, 1982, naming 17 defendants, twelve of whom were involved in the mining, manufacturing, importing, converting, distributing, and sales of asbestos or asbestos products. The remaining defendants were employers of Charles Hagen, whose contracts provided employment for Hagen, but also caused him to come into contact with asbestos products. As the principal opinion points out, settlements, which amounted to $220,000, and bankruptcies reduced the number of defendants at trial to three: Owens-Illinois, Celotex and Fibreboard. Following the Celotex bankruptcy, only Owens-Illinois and Fibreboard remained “live” defendants. Plaintiffs’ counsel handled this case with diligence, aggressively pursuing the defendants and preparing the plaintiffs’ ease.
The principal opinion announces no new theory of law which operates to reverse plaintiffs’ judgment in this case. The cases upon which the plaintiffs rely in this Court, and of which we assume they were aware *676as they prepared for their 1989 trial, chart a course for proving causation and liability on the part of the defendants. That charted course is not difficult to understand. Yet, despite this map, plaintiffs’ evidence, in the words of the principal opinion, “did not establish causation under the standards of our law.”
In my view, remand under the circumstances of this case would be appropriate under two circumstances. First, remand is appropriate when the legal theory under which a plaintiff brings its case is changed by a judicial opinion and the record demonstrates there is evidence available to support a theory upon which recovery is a probability under the new rule announced by the court. As the majority opinion aptly shows, the plaintiffs did not prove causation under the existing law. No new theory of law is enunciated by the principal opinion.
Second is the rule followed in Kaufmann by Kaufmann v. Nagle, 807 S.W.2d 91, 95 (Mo. banc 1991).
It is a settled practice of appellate procedure that a case should not be reversed for failure of proof without remanding, unless the record indicates that the available essential evidence has been fully presented, and that no recovery can be had in any event. This rule is pertinent where the record indicates that other and additional evidence might be adduced in support of plaintiff’s action and enable him to make a submissible case.
[Citations omitted.] We can speculate that plaintiffs might be able to find an expert who can testify to the missing causation. But under the Kaufmann rule, the record in the case itself must provide the indication that “available essential evidence” was not presented. On the record in this case, it appears that the available essential evidence has been fully presented. Further, the record does not “indicate that other and additional evidence might be adduced in support of plaintiff’s action.”
The principal opinion cites three cases in support of its position that remand is required. Kaufmann; 807 S.W.2d at 951; Moss v. National Super Markets, Inc., 781 S.W.2d 784, 786 (Mo. banc 1989); and Morris v. Shell Oil Co., 467 S.W.2d 39, 43 (Mo.1971). For the reasons previously stated, Kaufmann does not support the principal opinion’s remand.
In Moss, the plaintiff slipped and fell on a puddle in the defendant’s parking lot. This Court reversed the judgment in favor of the plaintiff, because she failed to show that the defendant should have discovered the puddle. The Court’s remand was predicated on two theories: First, that this Court announced a broadening of the rules governing submissibility in slip and fall cases under Sheil v. T.G. & Y. Stores Co., 781 S.W.2d 778 (Mo. banc 1989), which was decided contemporaneously with Moss. Second, that the Court believed that the record — that is a deposition taken in the case and filed with the trial court — showed that plaintiff could have introduced evidence that store employees regularly went into the parking lot and were thus on notice of the dangerous condition.
Morris was a product liability/failure to warn case. The plaintiff was injured by her use of a chemical produced by Shell and distributed by another party. There was evidence that the distributor failed to warn the plaintiff of the hazard associated with the chemical in question. The plaintiff did not offer evidence at trial as to whether Shell gave any warning to the distributor. The court remanded on its speculation outside the record that “[i]t would appear that some evidence on this matter is available.” Id. at 43. In view of Kaufmann, the court’s decision in Morris is incorrect.
On the record in this case, there is no indication that plaintiffs had available evidence to support their theory of causation under Missouri law. Nor does this Court announce new law. The plaintiffs had every opportunity to prove their case against Fibreboard and should have been well-advised of the requirements of Missouri law as to causation prior to court. Yet, plaintiffs failed to make their case. The rules of law this Court has followed call for the judgment against Fibreboard to be reversed outright.
*677I respectfully dissent as to the remand of the plaintiffs’ case as to Fibreboard.