Plaintiffs representing Mr. Robert Wayne Henderson in an asbestos lawsuit have had their motion for a rehearing granted by the Texas Supreme Court.
Mr. Henderson, now deceased, was a victim of mesothelioma – a type of cancer that is primarily caused by asbestos exposure. According to the complaint, the decedent was exposed to asbestos while working as a contractor at Dow Chemical Co.’s Freeport facility in 1967.
Initially, a Dallas County 160th District Court ruled against Dow Chemical Co., awarding the plaintiffs $2.64 million, which prompted the defendant to appeal. The appeal was granted by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas in February, 2013, on account of Chapter 95 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which basically says that a property owner is not liable for personal injury, death, or property damage to a contractor or employee of a contractor working on that property.
After a petition for review was denied in May, Mr. Henderson’s family submitted a brief in October. In the brief, the family explained that a retrial was in order due to the fact that the previous rulings contradicted one another. “The Fifth Court in this case adopted a categorical rule of law that Chapter 95 applies to bar a contractor’s contemporaneous negligent activity in a claim,” the family wrote in the brief. “In contrast, the Fourteenth Court adopted the diametrically opposite rule of law based on virtually identical fact and the same statutory language.”
The Supreme Court agreed that the conflict presented by the two courts required intervention. Oral arguments begin January 14.
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