HOUSTON, Texas – An asbestos case that has garnered a great deal of publicity has ended with the jury finding for the defendant. The jury in the case against DuPont returned a verdict in favor of the defendant, finding no negligence on the part of the company.

A month ago, plaintiff’s attorney drew headlines with his opening statement, which claimed that DuPont’s past asbestos safety records were so malicious and egregious that the company’s right to exist should be taken away. The Jefferson County jury did not agree. They found that there was no negligence on the part of DuPont in the death of Willis Whisnant, a former pipefitter at a DuPont plant.

Willis Whisnant Jr. worked for B.F. Shaw as a pipe fitter who was contracted to work at a DuPont plant in 1966. The suit brought against DuPont by his family alleged that he was exposed to enough asbestos fibers while working there to eventually develop mesothelioma, a rare cancer attributed to asbestos exposure. Whisnant died of mesothelioma at the age of 72 in 1999.

After his death, Whisnant’s family joined an on-going class action suit against DuPont and several other chemical and oil companies, filed originally in Jefferson County District Court before Whisnant’s death. The class members alleged that DuPont negligently and maliciously exposed them to asbestos when they knew asbestos fibers created health hazards. Whisnant’s case, which included five other defendants, was severed from the class action suit. The other defendants have settled out of court.

The jury decided that even though Whisnant was an independent contractor, DuPoint shared responsibility for his safety, however, they decided that DuPont did not contribute to his cancer by negligence.

The plaintiffs stated that DuPont, like many other companies, knew about the dangers of asbestos as early as the 1940s, but conspired to conceal the knowledge to protect the company from lawsuits instead of implementing policies that would protect the lives of its workers.

DuPont’s attorneys focused on two points. First, they argued that the studies done in the 1940s were focused on those in environments where workers were heavily exposed to asbestos, such as in mines, not factory and chemical plant workers. In addition, they argued, DuPont implemented safety guidelines to protect its employees from asbestos even before OSHA implemented its asbestos guidelines in 1972.

Among the witnesses who took the stand during the trial were coworkers who testified that they’d never seen Whisnant wear a respirator mask, which the company guidelines required workers to wear when they were ‘exposed to extreme dust’ conditions, as well as consultants and employees of DuPont who described the safety guidelines implemented by DuPont before the 1972 OSHA guidelines were established.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Asbestos Litigation, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.