$210,000 Punitive Verdict in Natchez Asbestos Fraud Trial
There was a $210,000 punitive verdict on top of the $210,000 actual damages verdict in the Natchez asbestos fraud trial discussed in the prior post.
That's a good verdict for Natchez. I got my clock cleaned there this time last year by Carl Hagwood and Michael Phillips. But they have a nice courtroom and Judge Bramlette is a great judge.
Mississippi Litigation Review
3/9/10
Ill. Central Railroad Gets Plaintiff's Verdict in Natchez Asbestos Fraud Trial
There was a plaintiff’s verdict yesterday in federal court in Natchez in favor of Ill. Central RR against McComb lawyers William Guy and Thomas Brock. The trial involved the claims in two cases. Here are the Amended Complaints in the Turner case and the Harried case. Ill. Central sued the lawyers and their clients, but the clients obtained a defense verdict at trial.
The Complaints alleged that the individual defendants were plaintiffs in the big Cosey Jefferson County asbestos case that was filed in 1995 in which there was a massive plaintiff verdict around ten years ago. It was one of the verdicts that led to tort reform in Mississippi.
The defendants sued Ill. Central in 2001 in Jefferson County asserting an FELA claim related to exposure to asbestos. The defendants failed to disclose to Ill. Central that they were plaintiffs in the Cosey case and settled their claims with Ill. Central for $90,000 and $120,000 respectively. The individual defendants testified that the lawyers (Guy and Brock) were aware of their prior asbestos claims in Cosey.
Read more at Mississippi Litigation Review
Posted March 10, 2010 - 12:13 pm
Friday, September 3, 2010
Jury found that the two lawyers (William Guy and Thomas Brock) committed FRAUD. Not only did the jury return the money to Illinois Central that was part of the fraud, but they also awarded punitive damages against those 2 lawyers.
Reminds me of U. S. District Judge Janis Jack. She dropped an atomic bomb in 2005. She presided over 3-day hearings in Texas in a multidistrict litigation involving silicosis/asbestos. It was to determine the credibility of the medical evidence being offered to support the silicosis claims.
-Judge Jack issued a 249-page order exposing all of the fraud. “the claims in this case defy all medical knowledge and logic” “These diagnoses were about litigation rather than health care. And yet that statement, while true, overestimates the motives of the people who engineered them…. Truth and justice had very little to do with these diagnoses. Instead, these diagnoses were driven by neither health nor justice; they were manufactured for money.”
-Judge Jack had issued an order calling for x-rays to be moved from Texas to Jackson to be closer to most of the plaintiffs and their lawyers. Interestingly, 152 x-rays went missing right before the transfer.
-Judge Jack, who by the way has a medical background, threw out thousands of cases. Some that came back to Mississippi, court tossed out 4,202 of them. Ms plaintiff firm also sent letters to silicosis clients saying, well, we took another look at your x-rays and it turns out, you’re not really sick (“Unfortunately, the pulmonologist who re-read your check x-rays determined them to be negative for silicosis.” Can you imagine someone saying—UNFORTUNATELY, you don’t have silicosis?!). That firm dropped about 50 cases.
And now we have a case where a JURY said, wait a minute, yall did what?! And even awarded punitive damages on top of that. Amazing.