WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court said on April 1 that it will review a West Virginia court ruling that a railroad must compensate former workers for the emotional distress of being exposed to potentially cancer-causing asbestos on the job, according to a wire service report.
The high court agreed to hear an appeal from Norfolk & Western Railway Co., which claimed that trial lawyers are using sympathetic West Virginia courts to wring money out of railroads.
The case concerns six retired Norfolk & Western workers who sued under a federal law governing railroad employee suits. The six claimed they suffered asbestosis, a potentially deadly lung disease. They were awarded $5.8 million, part of which was intended to compensate for the fear of developing cancer later on.
The workers did not present sufficient evidence of any emotional injury related to the fear, such as psychiatric symptoms, the railroad claimed in asking the high court to step in.
Lawyers for the six workers said it is impossible to tell how much money the jury intended to award for emotional distress. The railroad also exaggerated claims that the West Virginia verdict was out of line with other courts and an earlier Supreme Court decision, the workers asserted.
Trial lawyers solicit former railroad employees for mass lawsuits alleging on-the-job asbestos exposure and file the suits in West Virginia, Norfolk & Western’s lawyer claimed. Although most of the workers do not live in the state, courts “in notoriously populist West Virginia jurisdictions” routinely allow the suits to continue, the railroad claimed.
Railroads often settle the suits rather than pay the cost of taking them to trial, even though the railroads claim the cases are baseless, Norfolk & Western said.
“This is systematic injustice and gamesmanship that demands this court’s attention,” the railroad’s lawyer argued in court papers.
Norfolk & Western, now part of the railroad conglomerate Norfolk Southern, asked the high court to take the unusual step of reviewing a case from an intermediate court. The Supreme Court typically considers only cases in which a state’s highest court or one of the 13 federal appeals courts has issued a ruling.
West Virginia’s highest state court has repeatedly declined to hear the railroad appeals in asbestos cases, leaving the railroads no choice but to try to skip over the court and ask for Supreme Court help, railroad lawyers claim.
More than 5,000 railroad asbestos claims were pending in the state last year.
The Supreme Court will hear the case during the term that begins in October.
The case is Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Ayers, 01-963.