A Los Angeles County jury discovered companies that make or distribute engineered stone at fault Wednesday for the struggling of a 34-year-old stonecutter troubled with an incurable illness.
In a call watched carefully by silicosis consultants and the stone business, jurors deliberating at Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A. determined largely in favor of Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, who was identified with silicosis and needed to endure a double lung transplant after years of reducing engineered stone counter tops.
The choice adopted deliberations that spanned 5 days of the multi-week trial. Earlier than the decision, the 2 sides within the case had agreed that financial losses for Reyes Gonzalez exceeded $8 million.
The jury determined that different damages — which may embody bodily ache, psychological struggling and emotional misery — amounted to greater than $44 million. Nonetheless, as a result of the jury didn’t deem the defendants wholly chargeable for these damages, they won’t be collectively accountable for the complete quantity.
It concluded that Caesarstone USA bore 15% of the duty, Cambria 10% and Coloration Marble 2.5%. The courtroom will finally decide how a lot every defendant should pay.
Reyes Gonzalez is amongst scores of California countertop cutters who’ve sued firms like Caesarstone and Cambria after falling in poor health with silicosis, which is brought on by inhaling tiny particles of crystalline silica.
His case was the primary to go to trial, in response to his attorneys. It examined whether or not firms that manufacture or distribute slabs of synthetic stone, generally marketed as quartz, might be held chargeable for the ravages of silicosis, an historical illness now rising amongst countertop cutters barely in center age.
Scientists have linked the eruption of silicosis circumstances amongst stonecutters to the booming recognition of engineered stone, which is often a lot increased in lung-scarring silica than pure stone equivalent to granite or marble. In California, greater than a dozen countertop cutters have died of silicosis in recent times. In a latest examine of the rising circumstances and fatalities, researchers discovered the median age at loss of life was 46.
Attorneys for Reyes Gonzalez argued that the businesses had failed to offer enough warning in regards to the risks of reducing the slabs and that the dangers far outweighed the advantages of their merchandise. Gilbert Purcell, certainly one of his legal professionals, advised the jury that engineered stone has “nasty, nasty dangers” that had not been correctly disclosed.
“An organization ought to by no means needlessly trigger threat to others,” Purcell mentioned, “and that’s what they did.”
For example, Purcell argued, Cambria had failed for a decade and a half to warn that silica mud might be an invisible hazard. How can employees keep away from respiration mud, he argued, “when you may’t even know you’re respiration it as a result of it’s invisible?”
A cloud of mud envelops a countertop fabricator reducing engineered stone at a Solar Valley store final 12 months.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Occasions)
Attorneys representing firms that make or distribute engineered stone argued that the operators of the Orange County workshops the place Reyes Gonzalez labored have been accountable. If they’d used the right protections, he wouldn’t have gotten silicosis, mentioned Peter Strotz, an lawyer representing Caesarstone USA.
“They knew what they needed to do. They didn’t do it. … Worst of all, they deceived Mr. Reyes Gonzalez. They led him to imagine he could be protected when he was not,” Strotz advised the jury. He argued Caesarstone USA had executed its half by offering security data and shouldn’t be blamed for the “misuse” of its merchandise.
Cambria lawyer Lindsay Weiss mentioned the corporate had supplied warnings, together with labels on the slabs themselves, and provided free coaching to the “fabricators” who minimize, grind and polish the fabric to form it into counter tops.
She held up a pattern of its quartz surfacing materials to the jury, telling them it was secure. “The issue is when individuals don’t comply with the regulation once they deal with this product,” Weiss mentioned.
And Coloration Marble, a distributor, argued there was no proof that Reyes Gonzalez had minimize or polished slabs offered by its firm. The jury discovered Coloration Marble accountable for negligence — because it did Caesarstone USA and Cambria — however didn’t deem it accountable for different claims for product legal responsibility because it had for these companies.
The lawsuit initially focused a protracted record of firms, however all however three — Caesarstone USA, Cambria and Coloration Marble — have been dismissed or settled earlier than the jury reached a verdict. Legal professional James Nevin, who represents Reyes Gonzalez, mentioned most had “resolved the case pursuant to confidential agreements.”
Strotz, representing Caesarstone USA, declined to touch upon the decision.
Weiss mentioned her shopper, Cambria, disagreed with the choice. “We expect this isn’t a product problem. It’s a office security problem,” she mentioned. “That is dealt with safely each single day.”
Raphael Metzger, one of many attorneys representing Reyes Gonzalez, known as the choice “a win for public well being and occupational security.”
He grew emotional as he praised the jurors for his or her work. “Solely in America,” he mentioned, “can Hispanic immigrants come right here and obtain justice — as they’ve.”
The trial, which stretched greater than a month, spotlighted the risks going through employees like Reyes Gonzalez, who testified that he got here to the U.S. from the Mexican state of Veracruz as a youngster to flee poverty. For years, he labored from morning to night reducing slabs for counter tops.
Mud was rampant within the Orange County workshops the place he labored, Reyes Gonzalez testified, at instances a lot that it regarded like fog. His masks would develop filthy. Even when he used water whereas reducing, he mentioned, “quite a lot of mud would come off” when the liquid had dried.
His spouse, Wendy Torres Hernandez, mentioned that when Reyes Gonzalez bought his analysis, he known as her crying. “He was advised that there was no treatment for it. There was nothing that he may do,” she mentioned.
“I advised him we’d determine one thing out to assist him, as a result of I couldn’t simply let him die,” she testified. Despondent, he advised her “that he was going to begin planning for his funeral.”
Reyes Gonzalez finally grew to become so sick that each his lungs wanted to get replaced in a transplant. The surgical procedure could afford him solely six extra years to dwell earlier than he wants one other set of transplanted lungs — and a physician testified that if that did occur, he could be unlikely to get a 3rd transplant due to his age.
He should take a number of medicines and thoroughly monitor his well being till he dies. Due to the medicines he takes, Reyes Gonzalez mentioned he can’t have kids, which pains him as a result of his spouse adores them. Docs would possibly discover a approach for them sooner or later, he mentioned, however can’t assure it.
Attorneys for Caesarstone and different firms targeted a lot of their questioning on members of the Silverio household, who paid Reyes Gonzalez for his work in a string of Orange County workshops. When a co-worker named Guillermo Mora de los Santos took the stand, a protection lawyer questioned him about whether or not the Silverio outlets had ever supplied trainings on office security or had any “silica management program.”
Mora de los Santos mentioned no. “We didn’t find out about that — about that illness,” he mentioned about silicosis.
Weiss, representing Cambria, pressured to the jury that Reyes Gonzalez had described sweeping up dry mud and utilizing compressed air to wash — practices that ship mud into the air — and that he wasn’t supplied with an sufficient masks. Nor was water used correctly, she mentioned.
In courtroom, one of many Silverios denied having seen security data from Caesarstone that included a video on silicosis dangers, regardless of having signed a type saying he had acquired such supplies.
Purcell, in his closing remarks, argued that regardless of the Silverios had executed or not executed couldn’t absolve the defendants. “This chain of security begins with them.”
In its verdict, the jury had the chance to assign a proportion of the whole duty to “others” moreover Reyes Gonzalez and the engineered stone firms. Jurors assigned 70% to “others” and a couple of.5% to Reyes Gonzalez himself.
The Silica Security Coalition, an business group that maintains that engineered stone can and ought to be minimize safely, mentioned the 70% fault attributed to “others” was an acknowledgment of the unsafe practices at his office.
“We expect the California jury was improper accountable the slab suppliers for any of Mr. Reyes-Gonzalez’s accidents from his unsafe office situation, and we anticipate the decision shall be appealed by a number of events,” the coalition mentioned in an announcement.
Juror Laura Miller, who mentioned she disagreed with most of her fellow jurors find the businesses liable, mentioned after the decision that she felt the blame lay with the Silverios. To achieve their choices within the civil case, at the least 9 of 12 jurors needed to agree on the verdicts.
“The employer was utilizing no precautions,” Miller mentioned.
Nevin, certainly one of Reyes Gonzalez’s legal professionals, mentioned in an announcement that the jury had “rightly rejected” efforts accountable “unsophisticated hirers” who had not been warned of the risks themselves.
His agency, Brayton Purcell LLP, now represents greater than 150 countertop cutters with silicosis who labored at greater than 350 outlets, it mentioned in an announcement. “The issue is the merchandise, not the outlets.”
A lot of the courtroom case revolved across the sorts of measures wanted to guard employees from silica mud from engineered stone, as a string of consultants testified in regards to the dangers of reducing such slabs. Amongst them was Dr. Kenneth Rosenman, who testified that Reyes Gonzalez bought silicosis regardless of having used some instruments that dispense water as a result of they have been “not sufficiently protecting.”
“They don’t decrease the mud stage low sufficient to stop this extreme illness,” mentioned Rosenman, chief of the division of occupational and environmental drugs at Michigan State College.
One other witness for the plaintiff, industrial hygienist Stephen Petty, mentioned that N95 masks could be “backside of the barrel” safety for engineered stone mud. Even essentially the most protecting respirators, which use a tank of unpolluted air, will not be a “everlasting resolution” as a result of employees have a tendency to regulate them, breaking the seal, he mentioned.
Protection attorneys turned to different witnesses, together with industrial hygienist Brian Daly, who mentioned that engineered stone could be minimize and polished safely. Reyes Gonzalez “wouldn’t have developed silicosis had his employer had a program that was protecting” and adopted office security rules, Daly testified.
Choose William F. Fahey had excluded testimony that attorneys representing Reyes Gonzalez had sought from Georgia Tech scientist Jenny Houlroyd, saying her examine was based mostly on knowledge that weren’t supplied to the courtroom, amongst different points. Her evaluation had concluded that it wasn’t economically possible to make use of the measures wanted to soundly minimize engineered stone, particularly for small workshops.
Synthetic stone is “a uniquely poisonous product,” and neither “moist strategies” nor carrying a masks would make it secure to chop and grind, Houlroyd wrote in a ready record of her opinions.
