Satterfield v. Breeding Insulation Co.

• Decision Date: 09 September 2008
• Docket Number: No. E2006-00903-SC-R11-CV.,E2006-00903-SC-R11-CV.
• Citation: 266 S.W.3d 347
• Parties: Doug SATTERFIELD v. BREEDING INSULATION COMPANY et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

266 S.W.3d 347

Doug SATTERFIELD v. BREEDING INSULATION COMPANY et al.

No. E2006-00903-SC-R11-CV.

Supreme Court of Tennessee, at Knoxville.

January 8, 2008 Session.

September 9, 2008.

John A. Lucas and John T. Winemiller, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Alcoa, Inc.

Gregory F. Coleman, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Doug Satterfield.

Martin B. Bailey and John L. Miller, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Mark A. Behrens, Washington, DC, for the Amici Curiae, Coalition for Litigation Justice, Inc., Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, National Association of Manufacturers, National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation, American Chemistry Council, Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, and National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies.

Timothy D. Patterson, Memphis, Tennessee, and Deborah J. LaFetra and Timothy Sandefur, Sacramento, California, for the Amicus Curiae, Pacific Legal Foundation.

OPINION

WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which WILLIAM M. BARKER, C.J., CORNELIA A. CLARK, and GARY R. WADE, JJ., joined. JANICE M. HOLDER, J., filed a separate concurring and dissenting opinion.

This appeal involves the efforts of the estate of a twenty-five-year-old woman who contracted mesothelioma to recover damages for her death. While she was alive, the woman filed a negligence action against her father's employer, alleging that the employer had negligently permitted her father to wear his asbestos-contaminated work clothes home from work, thereby regularly and repeatedly exposing her to asbestos fibers over an extended period of time. After the woman died, the Circuit Court for Blount County permitted her father to be substituted as the personal representative of her estate. The employer moved for a judgment on the pleadings on the narrow ground that it owed no duty to its employee's daughter. The trial court granted the motion. The deceased woman's father appealed the dismissal of his daughter's wrongful death claim. The Tennessee Court of Appeals reversed the trial court. Satterfield v. Breeding Insulation Co., No. E2006-00903-COA-R3-CV, 2007 WL 1159416 (Tenn.Ct.App. Apr.19, 2007). We granted the employer's application for permission to appeal to determine whether the deceased woman's complaint can withstand a motion for judgment on the pleadings. We have determined that it does because, under the facts alleged in the complaint, the employer owed a duty to those who regularly and for extended periods of time came into close contact with the asbestos-contaminated work clothes of its employees to prevent them from being exposed to a foreseeable and unreasonable risk of harm.

The only issue on this appeal is whether the complaint of a woman who succumbed to mesothelioma should have been dismissed solely because the defendant did not have a duty to act reasonably to prevent her from being exposed repeatedly and regularly over an extended period of time to the asbestos fibers on her father's work clothes. The purpose of this appeal is not to determine whether, in fact, the defendant was negligent or whether its conduct caused the woman's death. Because the complaint was dismissed in response to a Tenn. R. Civ. P. 12.03 motion, the facts contained in this opinion are those found in the challenged complaint.¹

I.

Alcoa, Inc.² is an international manufacturer of aluminum and aluminum products. It owns and operates facilities in various locations throughout the United States, including a facility in Alcoa, Tennessee. Alcoa uses materials containing asbestos in many of its manufacturing operations. Since the 1930s, Alcoa has been aware that asbestos is a highly dangerous substance, and it has closely monitored the research into the dangers posed by asbestos.

Beginning in the 1940s, Alcoa opened its own internal hygiene department which provided directives to Alcoa's local facilities regarding the handling of materials containing asbestos. Because of the frequent use of materials containing asbestos in its manufacturing processes, Alcoa was aware that the air in its factories contained high levels of asbestos fibers and that its employees were being exposed to these fibers on a daily basis.

Alcoa became aware in the 1960s that the dangers posed by asbestos fibers extended beyond its employees who were in constant direct contact with the materials containing asbestos or the asbestos fibers in the air. It learned that even intermittent exposure to low levels of asbestos fibers resulted in an increased risk of disease. At approximately the same time, Alcoa also learned that persons living near facilities that made extensive use of materials containing asbestos were experiencing higher disease rates, as were the family members of its employees who were being exposed regularly and repeatedly to the asbestos fibers on the employees' work clothes.

In 1972, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") promulgated regulations prohibiting employees who had been exposed to asbestos from taking their work clothes home to be laundered. Tests that Alcoa conducted at a number of its facilities, including those in Tennessee, revealed that the levels of asbestos fibers on the workers' clothes were extremely high.

In 1973, Doug Satterfield began working at Alcoa's facility in Alcoa, Tennessee. He worked there for two years until he entered the United States Army in 1975. After three years of military service, Mr. Satterfield resumed working at the Alcoa plant in 1978. He continued to work for Alcoa until at least 1984. His job assignments resulted in his exposure to high levels of asbestos dust and fibers on a daily basis.

Contrary to the OSHA regulations, Alcoa failed to educate Mr. Satterfield and its other employees regarding the risk of asbestos or how to handle materials containing asbestos. Even though Alcoa's employees worked extensively with materials containing asbestos, these materials did not contain warning labels or notices stating that they contained asbestos. Despite the fact that Alcoa was aware of the dangers posed by asbestos before Mr. Satterfield became an employee, it failed to apprise him or its other employees of the dangers of asbestos or specifically of the danger associated with wearing home their asbestos-contaminated work clothes. In addition, Alcoa failed to provide protective coveralls for its employees, discouraged the use of its on-site bathhouse facilities, and did not offer to launder its employees' work clothes at its facility. Accordingly, Alcoa's employees, including Mr. Satterfield, left the plant each day unaware of the dangers posed by the asbestos fibers on their contaminated work clothes and without Alcoa making an effort to prevent others from being exposed to the asbestos fibers on its employees' clothes.

On September 7, 1979, Amanda Nicole Satterfield was born to Mr. Satterfield and Donna Satterfield. Because her birth was premature, she was required to spend the first three months of her life at the University of Tennessee Hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mr. Satterfield visited his infant daughter every day she was hospitalized. He came to the hospital immediately after work wearing his asbestos-contaminated work clothes and stayed with his daughter until late into the evening. Thus, from the day of her birth, Ms. Satterfield was exposed to the asbestos fibers on her father's work clothes.

Ms. Satterfield was eventually diagnosed with mesothelioma. On December 8, 2003, she filed suit against Breeding Insulation Company, Inc. ("Breeding") and Alcoa in the Circuit Court for Knox County. She alleged that mesothelioma is a highly lethal form of cancer that is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos and that she contracted mesothelioma as a direct result of the negligent acts and omissions of both Breeding and Alcoa.³ The case was transferred to the Circuit Court for Blount County on February 11, 2004.

Ms. Satterfield died from mesothelioma on January 1, 2005. The trial court granted the motion filed by Mr. Satterfield, as the representative of his daughter's estate, to be substituted as plaintiff. The trial court also allowed Mr. Satterfield to amend his daughter's complaint to assert that the negligent acts and omissions of Alcoa and Breeding proximately caused his daughter's death.

On December 16, 2005, Alcoa filed a Tenn. R. Civ. P. 12.03 motion for judgment on the pleadings. Alcoa asserted that "as a matter of law it owed no legal duty to Amanda Nicole Satterfield." Following a hearing on January 30, 2006, the trial court filed an order on March 31, 2006, dismissing Ms. Satterfield's complaint⁴ on the ground that "there is no provision in Tennessee law (either through the Legislature or Court interpretation) that imposes on Alcoa a legal duty to a third party under the facts and circumstances of this case." Satterfield v. Breeding Insulation Co., No. L-14000, 2006 WL 901725, at *1 (Blount Cir. Ct. Mar. 31, 2006).

On April 10, 2006, Mr. Satterfield voluntarily dismissed Ms. Satterfield's claims against Breeding. Thereafter, on April 27, 2006, Mr. Satterfield, on behalf of his daughter's estate, appealed from the trial court's dismissal of Ms. Satterfield's claims against Alcoa. On April 19, 2007, the Tennessee Court of Appeals filed an opinion reversing the dismissal of Ms. Satterfield's complaint after concluding that the trial court had erred by holding that Alcoa owed no duty to Ms. Satterfield under the facts alleged in the complaint. Satterfield v. Breeding Insulation Co., No. E2006-00903-COA-R3-CV, 2007 WL 1159416, at *4-10 (Tenn.Ct.App. Apr.19, 2007).

Alcoa filed a Tenn. R.App. P. 11 application for permission to appeal. Because strikingly similar issues related to "take-home" or "transmission" asbestos exposure cases have sharply divided courts throughout the country and because this case implicates core principles of Tennessee's tort law, we granted...