Boudreaux v. Bollinger Shipyard

197 So. 3d 761, 2015 La.App. 4 Cir. 1345, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 1229, 2016 WL 3421537
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 22, 2016
DocketNos. 2015-CA-1345, 2015-C-0958
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 197 So. 3d 761 (Boudreaux v. Bollinger Shipyard) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Boudreaux v. Bollinger Shipyard, 197 So. 3d 761, 2015 La.App. 4 Cir. 1345, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 1229, 2016 WL 3421537 (La. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

PAUL A. BONIN, Judge.

11 Gerald Boudreaux died of lung cancer. His survivors sued several entities and their insurers claiming that Mr. Bou-dreaux’s exposure to asbestos at worksites caused or significantly contributed to his disease. Dr. Gerald E. Liuzza, a pathologist, was proposed by the plaintiffs as an expert witness to establish the causative link between the asbestos exposure and the disease.

Trinity Industries, Inc., one of the defendants, provoked a Daubert-Foret hearing to challenge, specifically, the methodology employed by Dr. Liuzza in arriving at his opinion; Its insurers, Continental Insurance Company, Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London, joined in and adopted Trinity’s two motions. The trial judge excluded Dr. Liuzza’s proposed testimony. Then, because the exclusion of Dr, Liuzza’s testimony meant that the plaintiffs were .unable to establish at trial an essential element of their claim, the trial judge granted summary judgment to Trinity and its insurers and dismissed the Boudreaux family members’ lawsuit against them with prejudice.

I ¿The parties all agree that the correctness of the ruling on the defendants’ motion for summary judgment is dependent upon our disposition of the- trial judge’s action in excluding Dr. Liuzza’s testimony. We review that ruling, under an abuse-of-discretion standard which, in the absence of the trial judge’s misapplication of the law or a clearly erroneous view of. the facts, is highly deferential to the trial judge’s evidentiary ruling.

The Boudreaux family members, as the proponents of Dr. Liuzza’s expert testimony, bear the burden of proving that the methodology employed by the proposed expert is generally accepted in the appropriate or relevant scientific community. See State v. Hampton, 15-1222, p. 17 (La.App. 4 Cir. 12/23/15), 183 So.3d 769, 779, writ denied, 16-0124 (La.3/14/16), 189 So.3d 1073; Wingfield v. State ex rel. Dept. of Transp. & Dev., 01-2668, p. 10 (La.App. 1 Cir. 11/8/02), 835 So.2d 785, 797. With the proponents’ burden of proof in mind, and in the absence of any legal error or gross factual error, we conclude that the trial judge did' not abuse her discretion in excluding Dr. Liuzza’s proposed expert testimony on causation. And, on that account, we affirm the grant of summary judgment and the dismissal with prejudice' of the plaintiffs’’ lawsuit against Trinity, Continental, Hartford, and Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s Londom

We turn now to a more complete explanation of our decision.

Ja1

We first briefly review this matter’s procedural history and examine the judgment under review.

Gerald Boudreaux was diagnosed with lung cancer on August 20, 2009, and died on May' 10, 2010. On May 6, 2011, Mr; Boudreaux’s three surviving children filed a petition for wrongful death and survival damages in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans against numerous parties that were, at one time, involved in the distribution, sale and ultimate use of asbestos and asbestos-containing products. Specifically, the Boudreaux family alleges that their -father suffered substantial exposure to asbestos while working at the same shipyard in Harvey, Louisiana, for a sue-[765]*765cession of owner/employers, between T963 and 2009. The petitions allege that Mr. Boudreaux began work at the Gretna Machine and Iron Works in 1963 as a painter, sandblaster, welder, tacker, and shipfítter. In 1981, Gretna Machine was purchased by Trinity Industries, Inc. In 1997, Trinity transferred ownership of the yard to Halter Marine, which in turn sold it to Bol-linger Shipyards in 2000. Mr. Boudreaux was still working in the shipyard at the time of his 2009 diagnosis.

In 2011, the Boudreaux family brought strict liability claims against Trinity, as successor in interest to Gretna Machine, and Bollinger, as successor in- interest to Halter Marine.1 The family also sued Trinity’s insurers — Travelers Casualty Land Surety Company, Continental Insurance Company, Employers Mutual Liability Insurance Company of-Wisconsin, Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London — and designated all of these, along with' Trinity and Bollinger, as “premises defendants.”2

Subsequently, Trinity brought two interrelated motions after the conclusion of discovery yet prior to trial. First, Trinity brought a motion in limine that sought to prevent Dr. Liuzza, the Boudreaux ■ family’s expert pathologist, from testifying at trial on the grounds that his opinion regarding medical causation, and the methodology by which he arrived at it, do not satisfy the requirements set- out in the Daubert and Foret cases. See Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L,Ed.2d 469 (1993); State v. Foret, 628 So.2d 1116 (La.1993). Trinity simultaneously filed a motion for summary judgment which asked the trial judge to dismiss the Boudreaux family’s claims against it in the event the trial judge grants its motion in limine.

With respect -to its motion in limine, Trinity argued' that the trial judge should strike Dr. Liuzza’s opinion on medical causation bécause the methodology used in reaching his opinion was flawed in two respects. First, Trinity pointed out that, while he acknowledged. that cigarette smoking is. the leading cause of lung Lcancer, Dr. Liuzza nevertheless did not know about — and thus did not consider— Mr. Boudreaux’s thirty-year history of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.

■ Next, Trinity noted that Dr. Liuzza formed his causation opinion without any underlying evidence regarding the dosage of asbestos received by Mr. Boudreaux via occupational exposure. In the usual case, Trinity claimed, a plaintiffs pathologist is not qualified to calculate asbestos dosage and so will rely upon the opinion of the plaintiffs industrial hygienist when forming his opinion on causation. In this case, Trinity notes, Dr. Liuzza formed his opin[766]*766ion without the benefit of an industrial hygienist’s, dosage report, but relied instead upon twenty-five pages excerpted from the. 108-page deposition of Terry Thi-bodeaux, one of Mr. Boudreaux’s co-workers. Based on these excerpts, Dr. Liuzza assumed that Mr. Boudreaux was exposed to asbestos on a near-daily basis. When asked at deposition, however, about various work-related factors that could impact the extent of Mr. Boudreaux’s historical exposure — factors discussed by the coworker in the eighty-three pages of deposition not provided to him — Dr. Liuzza conceded that he would have to defer to an industrial hygienist.

Accordingly, Trinity asserted, Dr. Liuz-za could not credibly testify whether Mr. Boudreaux’s historical exposure to asbestos exceeded any applicable exposure limits. Dr. Liuzza’s opinion that Mr. Boudreaux’s presumed daily exposure to asbestos resulted in lung cancer, Trinity argued, should be excluded because it is not based on any quantifiable evaluation of Mr. Boudreaux’s actual asbestos ^exposure history. Continental, Hartford, and Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London moved to : adopt as their own Trinity’s two motions.

In opposing the motion, the Boudreauxs first argued that, contrary to Trinity’s assertion, Dr. Liuzza did consider Mr.

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Bluebook (online)
197 So. 3d 761, 2015 La.App. 4 Cir. 1345, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 1229, 2016 WL 3421537, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/boudreaux-v-bollinger-shipyard-lactapp-2016.