After a three-week trial, a Hamilton County jury decided Thursday to deny damages to an area woman who said her husband's fatal mesothelioma, a rare type of cancer most commonly caused by asbestos, stemmed from years of exposure in a Cleveland, Tenn., factory.
Nancy K. Harriss and her late husband, Edward Catlett, sought $8 million in compensatory damages from Honeywell International Inc., the corporation liable for Bendix, a former car brakes factory in Cleveland, records show.
Honeywell International Inc. never informed Catlett that he was exposed to asbestos while doing contract work from 1974 to 1979, the couple alleged. Catlett, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in April 2014, died from the disease earlier this year.
"He had no idea that asbestos could cause mesothelioma," attorney Rett Guerry told the 13-person jury. "He had no idea that what he was breathing would kill him someday."
Guerry, a Charleston, S.C., attorney who specializes in asbestos cases, said Bendix, on the other hand, did know.
No later than 1972, the factory had created permissible exposure guidelines based on information from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Guerry said.
Even then, Guerry said, Bendix understood that guidelines "did not remove the threat of mesothelioma from the workplace." They only lowered it.
"This is not some little company," Guerry said. "This is a sophisticated organization.
"They knew."
After a PowerPoint presentation, Guerry turned away from the screen and appealed directly to the jury.
Catlett, 86 when he died, was a human being, he said.
"It's about a real person, two real people, who suffered greatly."
That argument failed to resonate with jurors, who deliberated most of Thursday afternoon.
"We're disappointed, obviously," said Chattanooga attorney Jimmy Rodgers, who worked alongside Guerry. "But we appreciate the jury spending three weeks of their time."
Jurors heard five asbestos experts detail the impacts of the heat-resistant fiber on humans. Throughout the proceedings, Honeywell's defense developed a two-pronged argument around it.
Attorney Dennis Dobbels contended Catlett was exposed to asbestos while ripping insulation for Chattanooga's Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant in the mid-1950s. That plant has since been converted to a Volkswagen assembly plant.
Mixing billowing cements, sawing rigid insulation and working around steam lines had a significant effect on Catlett, Dobbels said, because "all of that was uncontrolled."
Working at the TNT plant, Catlett's body absorbed vast amounts of a longer, deadlier fiber of asbestos known as amphibole, Dobbels contended.
At Bendix - which had ventilation equipment and a control program - Catlett encountered chrysotile, a shorter fiber that is safer and noncancer-causing, Dobbels said.
Dobbels also emphasized the measures he said Bendix took to quell asbestos levels.
"You need to consider what Bendix did," Dobbels said to the jury. "Did it reasonably act to ensure safety?"
He paused to let the question sink in.
"The answer is yes."
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow @zackpeterson918.