Personal Injury

TOXIC TORTS

CASE: Lockheed Litigation Cases, Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding, 2967 (Sup. Ct., Los Angeles)

WINNING ATTORNEYS: Thomas V. Girardi, Robert W. Finnerty and Carrie J. Rognlien, of Los Angeles, Girardi & Keese, Walter J. Lack, of Los Angeles, Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack; and Robert Garcia, of Woodland Hills, Calif.

JURY VERDICT: $785.4 MILLION

WORKERS WHO BUILD the top-secret military aircraft at the Lockheed Corp. plant in Burbank, Calif., were exposed to a variety of chemicals in the manufacturing process, said plaintiff' attorney Carrie J. Rognlien. "For any plane, workers had to clean every single piece of the planes with solvents," she said. For instance, the Stealth fighters built at Burbank were equipped with radar-absorbing materials designed to make the planes invisible to radar. Before the material was applied, however, the workers then had to clean the metal used in making the planes, using solvents containing such toxic chemicals as toluene, she said.

In 1986, Lockheed workers complaining of a series of maladies-including brain damage, peripheral nerve damage, respiratory problems, headaches and cancer-filed a toxic tort action against Lockheed. Lockheed settled in 1992 for $33 million.

The plaintiffs also had claims against more than two dozen makers of the solvents, and other chemicals and material used to build airplanes, charging that the companies had provided inadequate warnings of the dangers of the chemicals. These claims have set off a series of trials, resulting in plaintiffs' verdicts of $1.6 million, $10.6 million, $4.5 million and $25.4 million. In this trial, 42 plaintiffs were seeking damages from defendants: Exxon Corp., Shell Oil Co., Ashland Chemical Co., E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and Unocal Corp. The rest of the defendants had settled previously, said Ms. Rognlien, some of them for nominal amounts.

The defendant denied that the warnings were inadequate, blaming the workers' exposure on Lockheed's deficient safety practices. "The warnings played no part in how Lockheed used these products," said defense counsel Laurence F. Janssen. "Lockheed disregarded the warnings." The defendants also disputed the causation of the plaintiffs medical problems.

Nevertheless, a Los Angeles jury on July 30 awarded 29 of the plaintiffs a total of $25.4 million in compensatory damages, then added $760 million in punitive damages on Aug. 6. The defendants will file a number of post-trial motions to reduce or set aside the verdict, said Mr. Janssen. Reprinted with permission from The National Law Journal (NLJ. Sept. 14, 1998).