Environmental: August 2009 Archives

Judge Gregory K. Frizzell has ruled that the two expert witnesses who would have testified that bacterial loads in the Illinois Watershed are due to field application of poultry litter and other poultry waste will not be permitted to testify.  Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has sued seven poultry companies with headquarters and/or operations in Arkansas for contamination of the rivers and streams in the watershed. In a ruling last month, Judge Frizzell said Edmondson, should he prevail, could not seek the $615 million in monetary damages he sought to collect. 

Frizzell said the two witnesses -- Valerie Harwood, a microbiology expert at the University of South Florida, and Roger Olsen, an independent chemistry expert based in Denver, CO, based their conclusions on research methods that have never passed rigorous peer review and that Olsen's conclusions were subjective.  An Edmondson spokesperson said the attorney general's office is disappointed in the ruling but said Harwood's and Olsen's testimony is not essential to the case, which "remains intact and strong."

Excerpted from FeedStuffs.com.

A state appeals court has upheld the monetary awards given to a worker and the estates of two other workers who were exposed to asbestos at Riegel Paper Mills.  After a six-week trial in the Civil Division of Superior Court in New Brunswick, a jury awarded Walter L. Patton $514,220, the estate of Harry H. Wilson $76,102 and the estate of Walter W. Grube $259,045.  Scapa Dryer Fabrics Inc., the manufacturer of the felts that dried the wet rolls of paper on Riegel's paper machines, appealed the awards because of their size, the jury's failure to apportion liability to the other defendants in the complex litigation and cumulative errors in the trial.

Witnesses during the trial testified that Patton, Wilson and Grube all worked around the paper machines and the dryer felts and were exposed to asbestos dust. Witnesses also testified the three did not take any special precautions around the dryer felts, nor were they ever instructed to.  Scapa's expert witnesses testified that the dust created in the paper mills was "paper dust" that did not contain asbestos and that the three men were not exposed to hazardous levels of asbestos.  At the end of the trial, the jury rejected the claims of two other workers, but found only Scapa liable for damages to the three workers.

Excerpted from myCentralJersey.com.