Court Upholds $1 Million Manganese Exposure Award
December 27 , 2005
The 5 th Appellate Court in Illinois has upheld the country's only favorable welding rod exposure lawsuit award. Although the original case was decided in 2003, there were several motions to either overturn the verdict or cancel the results of the trial. As of today, those motions are null and the plaintiff will receive most of the $1 million originally awarded to him.
The suit was filed by Larry Elam against Lincoln Electric, Hobart Brothers and The BOC Group for failing to provide Elam with a safe working environment and for failing to properly look into welding health hazards at his job. The case hinged on these points, rather than on trying to find the companies guilty for negligently causing Elam's Parkinson's disease, which he has claimed was caused by exposure to welding rod elements at his work.
The judge in the case, Associate Judge Ralph Mendelsohn, awarded Elam $925,000, 75,000 less than originally awarded because Elam had settled some of the award already.
In their counter-arguments the defense repeatedly stated that there was no medical or scientific evidence supporting the claim that manganese exposure in the welding rods causes Parkinson's. The case, however, hinged on other related matters and was upheld by the plaintiff's contentions.
Another fact of the case was the written warnings on the welding rods about potential health risks associated with them. Elam claimed he had never seen the warnings and evidence presented suggested that many welders never saw any warnings because they were written on the cartons the rods came in, rather than any individual packaging or on the rods themselves.
There was also evidence suggesting that the companies knew about the possible links between welding rod exposure and the development of Parkinson's but failed to investigate the matter at all, potentially resulting in disaster.
Several other manganese exposure lawsuits and lawyers around the country were closely following Elam's case and now that the case was favorable toward Elam, manganese exposure's link to Parkinson's may become scientifically investigated at a higher and in-depth level by welding supply makers.
To learn more about manganese exposure and its various side effects, contact a manganese attorney.
