Following the rising trend of successful asbestos litigation, a jury recently awarded Jayne Menssen more than $17 million in damages following her diagnoses with mesothelioma and subsequent filing for lawsuit. Menssen believed that she contracted mesothelioma, an aggressive and incurable form of cancer, because of her exposure to the dangerous substance asbestos during her employment by the defendant of the trial.
Union Asbestos and Rubber Company, known later as Unacro Industries Inc., employed Jayne Menssen as a secretary in the 1960’s. According to Menssen, the company knew about the potential dangers of asbestos exposure but failed to warn their employees or take the proper precautions to safeguard them.
The medical community and the asbestos industry have been well aware of asbestos’s ill effects on human health since the first half of the 20th century, in fact, medical reports and industry journals have noted the dangers of the substance as early as the 1920’s. Asbestos is incredibly useful in a variety of industries due to its strengthening, insulating and fire retardation properties and its astonishingly cheap availability. The profitability of these properties lent to the difficulty in raising awareness about asbestos’s dangers, and legal proceedings intent on regulating and banning it’s use did not begin until the 1980’s.
Mesothelioma is caused by asbestos fibers entering the body through the respiratory or digestive tract and subsequently becoming lodged in a protective tissue in our bodies known as the mesothelium. The internal scarring that results can cause the formation of malignant cancer tumors. Mesothelioma is fatal, incurable, and incredibly aggressive - often killing its victims within just two years of diagnosis.
The latency period for the disease, that is, the amount of time it takes to develop after initial exposure to asbestos, is incredibly long. Mesothelioma can take several decades to develop, which lends to the difficulties involved in properly diagnosing it.
The Environmental Protection Agency maintains that asbestos fibers are not safe in any concentration, or at any level of exposure.
Jayne Menssen was awarded damages when the jury reached their verdict following a four week trial. She received compensatory and punitive damages totaling $17.87 million.
