Cancer Suit Reinstated Against Navy Asbestos Supplier

A company that supplied asbestos-containing products to the U.S. Navy must face a lawsuit over the death of naval shipyard worker's wife who was exposed to asbestos on his clothes, a Washington state appeals court has ruled.

The Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment granted to defendant Elliott Co., a maker of deaerating feedwater tanks used on Navy ships. Deaerating tanks remove dissolved gases from the water that feeds boilers.

Plaintiff Ernest Kimball IV sued Elliott and several other defendants in the King County Superior Court, alleging his mother, Phyllis, died from lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos fibers on his father's work clothes.

Ernest Kimball III worked as pipe fitter at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard from the 1940s through the 1980s. He would wear his dusty work clothes home, and his wife would launder them, the complaint says.

Judge Nicole K. Macinnes granted Elliott's motion for summary judgment, saying Kimball failed to make a case that his father was exposed to asbestos while working at the shipyard.

The appeals court reviewed the trial court's judgment.

The evidence showed that Elliott's tanks were insulated by asbestos-containing fabrics when Kimball's father worked at the shipyard and that maintenance work performed several times a year would cause asbestos fibers to drift over the entire facility, the court said.

Kimball therefore established a case that the exposure took place, it held.

His evidence showing that "a portion of the defendant's toxic material became part of a total cloud of toxic materials that caused the damage" is sufficient, and he need not prove individual responsibility on Elliott's part, the panel said.

Summary judgment was inappropriate as a reasonable jury could find that the company's asbestos-containing product caused Phyllis Kimball's cancer, the court held.

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Ernest Kimball is represented by William J. Rutzick of Schroeter Goldmark & Bender in Seattle.Elliott is represented by E. Pennock Gheen III of Karr Tuttle Campbell in Seattle.