SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - An electrician who worked at a bird-infested nut processing plant can sue over a brain disease he says he contracted from feces covering the machinery and floor, a California appeals court ruled, reversing a trial judge’s dismissal of the case for lack of evidence.
Unlike other cases were plaintiffs provided no evidence linking their disease to a particular place, Dale Beebe submitted expert reports linking histoplasmosis to bird droppings in a barn where he worked, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled in a June 6 decision.
Dale Beebe worked for an electrical subcontractor at the Firebaugh facility owned by Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds from 2012 to 2014, living for large stretches of the time in an RV on site. More than a year after he ceased working there, Beebe was admitted to the hospital with histoplasma capsulatum, an infection in his brain that required surgery.
Beebe sued Wonderful, claiming the company allowed bird feces to accumulate and removed it in dangerous ways, including with leaf blowers and hydro-blasting the concrete floor.
A trial court dismissed Beebe’s case, saying he failed to present evidence bird feces at the Firebaugh plant contained toxoplasma, which is endemic in the San Joachim Valley. Wonderful’s expert, Dr. Chadi Hage of Indiana University School of Medicine, said it was unlikely the plaintiiff contracted the disease at the Firebaugh plant since he didn’t display symptoms until 14 months later and no other workers were diagnosed with it. The typical incubation period is 3 to 17 days, the doctor said. Beebe worked at about 40 different sites after he finished at Firebaugh.
Beebe, 58, said in his own declaration that he didn’t work around bird feces between September 2014 and when he was rushed to the hospital in November 2015. “As I look back and now that I have become a little more knowledgeable about the disease,” he said, he realized he had symptoms before he stopped working at Firebaugh.
“I had flu like symptoms. I had a cold. I felt run-down. I had headaches. I was in a funk and tired all the time. I was forgetful. I experienced weight loss. I had a cough,” he said.
Beebe’s expert, Dr. Rasha Karan, an assistant professor at UCLA, said histoplasmosis is endemic to the San Joaquin Valley and not all patients manifest the disease within a few weeks of exposure. She said it was her opinion “to a reasonable medical certainty” that Beebe contracted the disease at the pistachio farm. Diane Trainor, a Ph.D in occupational health and safety at NYU, also said the farm didn’t follow standards for removing bird feces, creating an unacceptable risk of exposure.
Conan Dunlap, manager of the facility, said they tried a number of strategies to get rid of the birds including electronic calls, a fake owl and hiring a falconer but they still had to sweep away the feces periodically. Electrician Danny Dovell said the feces situation was “bad. Real bad,” but the workers still ate barbecue near the shed. Worker Robert Simons said the feces was an inch high on machinery, “almost like bird poop snow.”
The trial judge relied on a case where a worker’s lawsuit claiming he contracted Valley Fever from a dirt pile was dismissed for lack of evidence. In that case, the plaintiff’s experts didn’t offer any opinion about the source of the disease, which was endemic in the area. The court cited another case where a person who got sick with campylobacter blamed a tuna appetizer at a restaurant, but her dining companion ate the same thing and didn’t get sick and tuna doesn’t carry the disease unless it is contaminated by raw chicken.
Beebe, on the other hand, submitted “ample evidence” the pistachio farm was infested with swallows and “the accumulation of bird feces was an extreme problem,” the court said. That was enough to support a question of fact to be resolved at trial, the court concluded.