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The Terminix Case: Causation in Mass Tort Litigation
On Aug. 27, 2004, the Fifth Circuit Court of Davidson County in Nashville, TN entered final judgment for Terminix International in a nine-plaintiff toxic-tort personal injury lawsuit. Ballentine v. Terminix Int'l Co., No. 98C-836 (Aug. 27, 2004 Order). The case demonstrates the use of a challenge to the admissibility of plaintiffs' causation evidence to dismantle a multi-plaintiff or mini-mass tort claim from a single toxic exposure, and it illustrates the importance to both sides of getting the scientific evidence right from the outset. The approach to a mini-mass tort involving injuries from a single exposure need be no different from that used in a single plaintiff's claim.
The plaintiffs, workers in a US Air reservation center at the Nashville airport, claimed that they suffered pulmonary and/or vocal cord injuries from an application at the center of the insecticide Gold Crest Vectrin 0.5%. The basis for the judgment was the court's determination that plaintiffs had not presented reliable scientific testimony to support their allegations that Vectrin could cause such injuries or had done so in the plaintiffs. Entry of judgment came after a long and unsuccessful series of attempts by plaintiffs to rehabilitate their science case. The case presented complex medical causation issues, which were further complicated by the presence in the same case of multiple plaintiffs.
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