PROTECT CONSUMER JUSTICE.ORG

A Florida appeals court has ordered a new trial in a case that had resulted in a jury’s award of more than $24 million to the family of a man who died from a rare form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.  Dr. Stephen Guilder, a surgeon, died last month at age 52.  He had sued Honeywell, whose subsidiary Bendix made brake pads he had worked with as a teenager.  Guilder claimed asbestos in those pads caused his peritoneal mesothelioma.  Last year a Miami-Dade County jury found Honeywell negligent for selling the pads.  But the 3rd District Court of Appeal remanded the case after agreeing with Honeywell that a 1960s letter from a Bendix employee to an asbestos supplier should not have been admitted into evidence.  The letter showed Honeywell’s knowledge of asbestos dangers.  The three-judge panel also ruled the jury erred in awarding more than $10 million to Guilder’s children for the loss of a parent, saying the statute involved did not apply to negligence that occurred at the time Guilder was exposed.

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