Boston Partners Christopher Tauro, Kip Adams, and Hartford Partner Christopher Sanetti recently represented a client in an important appellate matter that was briefed and argued before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
April 08, 2016
Boston Partners Christopher Tauro, Kip Adams, and Hartford Partner Christopher Sanetti recently represented a client in an important appellate matter that was briefed and argued before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Our client, an industrial products supplier, had obtained summary judgment by the Maine Superior Court on the basis that it had no duty to warn the plaintiff of the potentially dangerous propensities of the products they supplied to the plaintiff’s employer, a shipyard in Bath, Maine. The Court also found no evidence of plaintiff’s actual exposure to the defendant’s products. The plaintiff’s estate alleged that the decedent developed and ultimately died from lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos while employed at the shipyard in the 1960s and 1970s.
The plaintiff appealed the summary judgment decision to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the law court. On appeal, the plaintiff argued that the lower court had erred in applying a causation standard that did not properly consider the exposure evidence presented by former shipyard workers during discovery. The plaintiff also appealed the lower court’s application of the sophisticated user doctrine, which further relieved the client of any duty to warn about the products the client had supplied, since the shipyard had extensive knowledge of the potential hazards of asbestos exposure prior to the plaintiff’s employment there. Prior to the lower court’s decision, no Maine court had recognized the sophisticated user doctrine.
Comprehensive briefing by the Lewis Brisbois team was submitted in December of 2015 and oral argument occurred in April of 2016. A written decision from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court is expected by the end of 2016.