(Associated Press circulated the following by Angela K. Brown on February 7.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — Jurors deliberated for their first full day Thursday without reaching a verdict on whether a woman’s stomach cancer was caused by chemicals used at a Southeast Texas railroad tie plant.
They are to return Monday to resume deliberations in Linda Faust’s lawsuit, which seeks at least $6 million from BNSF Railway Co.
Because it’s a civil lawsuit, the verdict does not have to be unanimous; at least 10 of the 12 jurors must agree.
Faust never worked at the Somerville plant but washed her husband’s stained clothes daily for nearly two decades. They were covered with coal-tar creosote, used to treat railroad ties to withstand weather and termites for up to 30 years. After her 1998 diagnosis, doctors removed her stomach, and now food moves directly to her intestines.
Negligence vs. habit
BNSF attorneys maintain her cancer was caused by her half-pack-a-day smoking habit and Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that causes stomach ailments.
Jurors first must decide whether BNSF’s negligence caused Faust’s cancer. If they answer no, the trial will end with a verdict in favor of BNSF. If they answer yes, then they will consider how much to award Faust for pain and suffering, loss of earnings, medical care and other things.
On Thursday afternoon, jurors sent a note to the judge asking if some of them could use their own knowledge about parts of the case. One juror is an engineer who knows about air modeling, and another is a mechanic with expertise in boilers.
State District Judge Jeff Walker said each juror can consider what he or she knows individually but not influence other members.
BNSF faces lawsuits from hundreds of people — many in a class-action lawsuit — who blame the Somerville plant on various cancers, birth defects and property damage. Faust’s suit is the first to go to trial.
BNSF sold the century-old Somerville plant to Pittsburgh-based Koppers in 1995. BNSF is a unit of Fort-Worth based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and remains the largest customer of the plant about 90 miles northwest of Houston.
Faust’s attorneys said BNSF, ignoring advice from the chemical manufacturer and its own legal department, failed to warn employees that creosote can cause cancer or provide them with protective gear. Her attorneys said the plant burned treated wood in boilers with no pollution control devices.
But BNSF attorneys said no studies show that creosote causes stomach cancer and said manufacturers’ warnings about the product referred only to skin cancer.
Since the early 1980s, critics have blamed the plant for what they call a cancer cluster and birth defects. They say a study by Texas health officials that found no unusual incidence of cancer in Burleson County was flawed.