And The Defense Wins
PUBLISHED JUNE 13, 2018 BY DRI
The Dallas Court of Appeals confirmed what DuPont’s defense team had asserted throughout the trial of the case in reversing the trial court’s $6,985,535.25 judgment and rendering a take-nothing judgment for DuPont. In its pretrial summary judgment motions and motions challenging the reliability of the Plaintiffs’ experts’ evidence and throughout the trial, DuPont urged and re-urged the lack of necessary scientific evidence for the Plaintiffs to comply with Texas law. DuPont’s trial attorneys, ever mindful of the potential for appeal, ensured that DuPont made a complete record. DRI member Larry Cotten of Cotten Schmidt and Abbott LLP co-counseled the trial of the case.
The Plaintiffs’ industrial hygiene expert utilized a dissimilar respirator study and made unfounded assumptions concerning the adequacy of the respirator and respirator program. He used inaccurate data to calculate the duration of the exposure. These flaws resulted in the expert arriving at an unreliable dose. The Plaintiffs’ medical causation witness opinion likewise was unreliable not only because the dose calculation was unreliable but also because the studies she relied upon were either not substantially similar to the Plaintiffs’ circumstances or they failed to quantify the level of exposure.
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