On April 5, an appeals court in Trenton upheld a $30.3 million jury award in an asbestos exposure case, an amount that will now go to the widow of ad exec, Mark Buttitta and his three children. The appeal was heard by a panel of three New Jersey Appellate judges who concurred with experts testifying that even a short-term exposure to asbestos could kill as it did in this case.
Mark Buttitta worked summer jobs with General Motors warehouses in Englewood and Edgewater 30 years ago. This caused asbestos exposure, and claimed the life of Mark Buttitta who passed away on December 21, 2002, after a one-year battle with mesothelioma. Mark and his wife initiated a lawsuit against Allied Signal and other suppliers to the GM warehouses after he learned the truth about his disease. All the companies named in the lawsuit settled with the Buttitta family before the jury verdict in 2008. Only two suppliers, Borg-Warner Corp. and Asbestos Corp. Ltd., held out claiming that New Jersey courts had no jurisdiction over a Quebec-based company.
Arnold Lakind, the lawyer for the Buttitta family, said that Borg-Warner understood the implications of the case on other similar matters, and that their lawyers did all they could to prove that asbestos exposure did not cause the mesothelioma. As Lakind said, “they were unable to produce a single expert to support their claim.”
This win is expected to have a far-reaching impact and many such cases will emerge in the future. A very large number of persons were helpless victims of asbestos exposure in New Jersey in the 1970s.
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On April 5, an appeals court in Trenton upheld a $30.3 million jury award in an asbestos exposure case, an amount that will now go to the widow of ad exec, Mark Buttitta and his three children.
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