The Law Firm of Motley Rice LLC - Asbestos Litigation History

Motley Rice lawyers have been representing asbestos and mesothelioma victims for over 20 years. The history of the law firm's practice in asbestos / mesothelioma litigation demonstrates the pioneering efforts of the firm's lawyers.

In the spring of 1976, a request was made for Ron Motley, dubbed by the American Lawyer as the "Man who took on Manville," to become involved as local counsel in personal injury lawsuits on behalf of insulation workers who had contracted asbestos-related diseases as the result of exposure to asbestos in South Carolina. Motley agreed, and within a matter of weeks had a 17 case inventory. But it would not be an easy road to success. The fight was a hard one. In November 1977, Ron Motley tried his first asbestos case in federal court in Aiken, South Carolina. The case ended in a verdict for the defense. The second case, another loss, was tried in the spring of 1978. Around the same time these cases were being tried, the infamous "Sumner Simpson" papers, internal company documents dating to the late 1920's and early 1930's demonstrating manufacturer knowledge of the hazards of asbestos, were being reviewed by another plaintiffs' lawyer in New Jersey. Ron Motley secured the documents, and on the basis of the newly discovered evidence, sought and was granted a new trial in the mesothelioma case he lost earlier in the spring. The motion was granted and the case subsequently settled.

Undaunted by the losses and buoyed by the settlement, as well as by the emerging evidence of asbestos industry wrongdoing, Motley began a tenacious discovery effort against the defendants. He and his colleagues also set out to locate potential experts, concentrating on historical medical experts who were practicing in the fields that encountered and treated the victims of asbestos-related diseases, such as mesothelioma. Efforts were made to locate individuals who had been consultants to the asbestos-manufacturing defendants.

The small South Carolina practice quickly evolved into a multi-state one. Law firms throughout the country associated with Motley's team to tap into their expanding inventory of medical and liability information. The first coutroom victory came in the summer of 1981 in Jacksonville, Florida when the jury returned a $1.85 million verdict in favor of Edward Janssens, a Navy boiler room technician diagnosed with asbestosis following exposure to asbestos onboard ships.

The cases continued to expand to include asbestos victims who had been exposed in a variety of trades, including insulation workers, plant workers, shipyard workers, boilermakers, steamfitters, pipefitters, railroad workers, brake mechanics and sheetmetal workers. Motley's team then began to concentrate their efforts preparing particular aspects of the cases, e.g., medical issues, defendant liability issues, legal issues and exposure issues. Although they continued to try individual cases, the growing number of individuals affected by asbestos disease who were seeking legal redress for their injuries soon made it necessary for the courts and litigants to look for alternatives to case-by-case resolution that was too slow.

Initially the Motley Rice lawyers attempted to facilitate the asbestos litigation through administrative segregation. Courts set up special dockets for asbestos cases only. Motions were filed urging courts to adopt case management orders establishing special procedures for handling the asbestos cases. Many courts instituted use of standardized interrogatories and requests for production to facilitate the discovery process. Depositions of witnesses were limited and the courts allowed the use of testimony in one case to be utilized in other cases, thereby obviating the expense and aggravation of repeated interrogation of witnesses regarding the same subject matter. Parameters were established for the taking of plaintiff depositions, ensuring that they were accomplished in a timely fashion and likewise restricting the opportunity for discovery abuses.

Motley Rice lawyers successfully advocated to a federal judge in Savannah, Georgia that cases involving similar injuries arising from the same conduct should be properly consolidated for trial under Rule 42(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. With 44 cases pending in the U.S. District Court in Savannah, Georgia in 1982, the court granted a motion for a common issue consolidated trial on behalf of four asbestos victims. (The defendants appealed the consolidation and the District Court's decision to allow consolidation was ultimately affirmed by the Eleventh Circuit in 1985.) The attorneys made the determination to take this novel approach, given the sheer magnitude of the number of individuals who had contracted asbestos-related diseases. Trying each action individually would have certainly delayed, to the point of denying in some instances, the asbestos victim's day in court.

Once the precedent for Rule 42(a) consolidation was established, motions for consolidation were filed in a number of jurisdictions. It soon became apparent that even multi-plaintiff consolidations would not end the backlog and ensure the expedient and proper disposition of the massive number of asbestos-related injury cases crowding the court dockets across the country. In Texas, particularly, the court docket in the Beaumont Division of the Eastern District of Texas had grown to over 3,000 pending asbestos cases. That court tried various methods of dispute resolution and, in February 1989, ordered that all pending cases be consolidated for discovery and trial on the issues of liability and punitive damages. Taking the Texas lead, Ron Motley urged the court in West Virginia to consolidate 315 cases on liability and punitive damages issues. The court agreed, and in the spring of 1989 a jury awarded the first punitive damages in a common issue trial for asbestos victims. Soon thereafter, in January 1990, founding members Motley and Rice were enlisted to assist in the Texas common issues liability trial for 3,031 asbestos plaintiffs. In January 1992, they were associated to try a similar case in Baltimore City Court on behalf of 8,549 plaintiffs. Following the Baltimore verdict, the same issues were presented to juries in Mississippi (9,000 plaintiffs) and West Virginia (Mass II - 2,025 plaintiffs and Mass III - 8,270 plaintiffs). In each of these common issue liability cases, verdicts were returned against the asbestos industry defendants.

In the early 1990s discussions commenced with asbestos defendants to attempt to come to some meaningful alternative resolution to the asbestos litigation crisis. No "global resolution" could be reached and in January 1993, Motley Rice lawyers and certain asbestos defendants agreed to file and simultaneously settle a class action lawsuit intended to resolve between 250,000 and 2,000,000 asbestos claims. The settlement has been meticulously scrutinized by the courts, and while the settlement class was ultimately rejected by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals (a decision that was later affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court), the Third Circuit in its opinion acknowledged:

The settlement . . . was not crafted overnight. Indeed, more than a case, this is a saga, reflecting the efforts of creative lawyers and an extremely able district judge to deal with the asbestos litigation explosion. Asbestos litigation has burdened the dockets of many state and federal courts, and has particularly challenged the capacity of the federal judicial system. The resolution posed in this settlement is arguably a brilliant partial solution to the scourge of asbestos that has heretofore defied global management.

Motley Rice attorneys have been on the cutting edge of this litigation for nearly thirty years and continue to craft creative and innovative ways to advocate the rights of asbestos and mesothelioma victims.