Articles

Last week, in Montemayor v. Sebright Products, Inc., a 4-3 majority of the Minnesota Supreme Court held that any “close” tort case must go to a jury. This case involves a tragic accident that led to the serious bodily injury of Nereus Montemeyer as a result of his employer’s misuse of an industrial extruder and … ...

A Minnesota hog farming operation, VZ Hogs LLP, uses an extruder manufactured by Sebright Products, Inc., to separate liquids from solid mass. When the extruder jammed, several workers tried to unjam it. The employer never trained them how to unjam the machine. Nereus Montemayor climbed into the machine while it was still connected to its … ...

Ronald Dummitt worked aboard Navy ships in the boiler rooms for two decades, during which time he was exposed to asbestos dust during the maintenance of valves and gaskets, some of which were insulated with asbestos-containing materials. Crane Co. manufactured some of the valves on which Dummit worked, none of which containing any asbestos whatsoev ...

Flavio Ramos worked as a mold maker, machine operator, and laborer for Supreme Casting & Pattern, Inc., which manufactured metal parts through “a foundry and fabrication process,” from 1972 to 2009. During this time, the industrial processing of raw materials created fumes from molten metal and dust from the plaster, sand, limestone ...

Special Electric Co. brokered the sale of raw asbestos from a mine in South Africa to Johns-Manville, which incorporated it into Transite pipe sold to Familian, a pipe supply company, that sold it to Pyramid Pipe & Supply, William Webb’s employer. As a broker, Special Electric never had possession of the raw asbestos. Webb worked … ...

Ronald Dummitt worked aboard Navy ships in the boiler rooms for two decades, during which time he was exposed to asbestos dust during the maintenance of valves and gaskets,  some of which were insulated with asbestos-containing materials.  Crane Co. manufactured some of the valves on which Dummit worked, none of which containing any asbestos what ...

Tort law allows injured people to sue the person or company that caused the injury.  The question of who “caused” the injury, however, has filled volumes of legal reports.  In the context of asbestos litigation, where the companies that manufactured asbestos-containing products long ago went bankrupt, plaintiffs suffering from asbesto ...

Maryland’s highest court has rejected an asbestos “duty to warn” lawsuit brought by the granddaughter of a worker who, for several months in the late 1960s, worked near another worker who used products containing asbestos.  In this case, plaintiff Jocelyn Farrar was the granddaughter of John Hentgen, who worked in the constructio ...