Mississippi Supreme Court Affirms Compensatory Damage Award for Asbestos Exposure But Remands for New Punitive Damages Trial

The Supreme Court of Mississippi yesterday upheld a jury’s $250,000 compensatory damages award in favor of a worker for exposure to a chemical company’s asbestos-containing products used to increase the viscosity of drilling mud.  The court, however, reversed a $500,000 punitive damages award and remanded the case for a new trial to determine the appropriate amount of punitive damages.  The trial court found the chemical company liable for inadequate warnings and design defects under the Mississippi Liability Act.

On appeal, the court concluded that the defendant did not prove that it provided a learned intermediary (here, the drilling company that employed the worker) with any information or warning about the products and that the chemical company had a duty to warn the plaintiff.  It also found that although the asbestos-containing products were labeled with a warning including OSHA-approved language, the trier of fact could reasonably have found the warning lacking.  Finally, although reliance on a warning was a necessary element when a plaintiff complains that a given warning is defective under Mississippi law, the court determined that in this case the warning instructed the user to take impossible steps to avoid exposure, so the plaintiff could not have relied on it.  For these reasons, the court upheld the compensatory damages award.

The court, however, found that immediately before the punitive damages question was submitted to the jury, the judge made comments indicating to the jury that its compensatory damages award may have been insufficient.  Accordingly, the reviewing court could not determine whether the judge’s remarks affected the punitive damages award and thus remanded the case for a new trial on punitive damages only.