April 30, 2018
The plaintiff, Marsha Lagerberg, individually and in her capacity as Executrix of the Estate of Erick Lagerberg, filed a petition for a new trial almost two years after the jury verdict in Lagerberg v. Rogers Corporation was reached in 2015. In that case, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant, Rogers Corporation, was responsible for the wrongful death of her husband through asbestos exposure in that it allowed asbestos particles to escape from its facility in Killingly, Connecticut into the ambient air. The decedent, Erick Lagerberg, was an employee of Rogers Corporation and worked in its Killingly plant. He also lived near the plant during various times in his life, including when he no longer worked for Rogers Corporation. Mr. Lagerberg contracted mesothelioma and died. After a full trial, the jury found that Rogers Corporation was negligent and that Mr. Lagerberg and other residents of the area surrounding the plant were exposed to asbestos containing particles which were carried in the ambient air. However, despite the above findings, the jury was not persuaded that the plaintiff was successful in proving that such exposure to asbestos containing particles in the ambient air was the proximate cause of Erick Lagerberg’s mesothelioma and reached a verdict in favor of Rogers Corporation. The plaintiff moved to set aside the verdict and requested a new trial. The motion to set aside the verdict was denied in April of 2015. The verdict was not appealed by the plaintiff.
Two years later, the plaintiff sought a new trial pursuant to Conn. Gen. Stat. §52-270(a), which lists various grounds under which a new trial may be warranted. Lagerberg v. Rogers Corporation, 2017 Conn. Super. LEXIS 833. The plaintiff in the instant matter argued that she was entitled to a new trial based on both the “discovery of new evidence” and the broader category of “other reasonable cause” listed under §52-270(a).
The court (Radcliffe, J.) was not persuaded by the plaintiff’s arguments and, while acknowledging inconsistent statements were in fact made by the representative of Rogers Corporation, the court concluded they did not impact the trial outcome. Further, the court found the defendant’s failure to disclose air samples did not require a new trial, since the plaintiff demonstrated neither that the air samples inside Rogers Corporation facility constituted newly discovered evidence nor that placing this evidence before the jury would have changed the jury’s verdict.
The verdict in 2015 in Lagerberg v. Rogers Corporation and the Court’s denial of the plaintiff’s petition for a new trial in 2017 are notable defense victories in Connecticut asbestos litigation. Especially noteworthy is that, when reaching its verdict in 2015, the jury followed the court’s instruction regarding the issue of proximate causation (i.e. whether the defendant’s actions were a substantial factor in causing the decedent’s injury). As a result, the jury awarded no damages to the plaintiff because the decedent’s inhalation of airborne asbestos particles away from the Rogers Corporation facility was not a substantial factor in causing his mesothelioma.