The Louisiana Supreme Court emitted a glimmer of sanity 1/28/03 when it overturned lower court rulings that made a company liable for speculative injuries and unproven damages from materials in soil taken from company property. We challenged the use of the “linear no-threshold” model of causation in tort litigation. This model essentially states that any level of exposure to a toxic agent is sufficient to cause injury.This is an important asbestos contamination case because the trial court and the appellate court awarded damages without any actual injuries: the claims arose from a slightly increased chance of contracting cancer and the fear of getting cancer, along with property damage. 143 plaintiffs filed suit, and then sought class action status. The trial court awarded from about $18,000 to $48,000 to individuals in 4 families.
In its ruling, the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected 6 to 1 the trial court's awards for a "slightly" increased risk of contracting an asbestos-related disease, emotional distress and punitive damages. It allowed an award for property damage.
The NAM supports the bedrock principle that proof that the defendant’s behavior actually caused harm should be a prerequisite to redress in our tort system lest our courts become flooded with lawyer-driven claims brought on behalf of persons who merely fear, but do not yet have and may never have, an injury.