ALAMEDA, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - A California jury awarded $2.6 million to a former Navy admiral in an asbestos case that featured a trial over Zoom that the defendant tried to stop after the plaintiff engaged in an online conversation with jurors.
The jury found the Navy 51% responsible for the mesothelioma suffered by plaintiff Ronald Wilgenbusch, assigning various other percentages to companies that supplied asbestos products used on ships and facilities where Wilgenbusch served.
Metalclad, the sole remaining defendant in the trial, was assigned 7% liability, meaning the net judgment against the company is likely to be less than $500,000 under complex calculations that include credits for the amount the plaintiff collected in other settlements.
Metalclad twice moved for mistrial, including after the lawyers moved to sidebar with the judge and Wilgenbusch entered a Zoom conversation with jurors. He showed jurors pictures of his trip to Spain, leading Metalclad to argue jurors would be prejudiced because the plaintiff earlier had testified he was devastated by the fact his illness would prevent him from traveling in future.
“Showing photographs of Spain (and possibly other vacation locations) was an undeniable attempt to cement in the jurors’ minds how important Spain and travel is to him and his family and how the loss of the enjoyment of traveling there because of his illness is a significant loss to him,” Metalclad said.
Honeywell won an earlier Zoom trial over asbestos after making similar complaints. Honeywell cited inattentive jurors including one who was emailing from a different computer and an alternate who was watching from bed. The original judge in that case recused himself after accidentally revealing online that he thought he had been exposed to asbestos from brakes and hoped it wasn’t enough to give him mesothelioma.