The Pennsylvania Superior Court has issued an order canceling a 2011 $14.5 million asbestos lawsuit settlement awarded to the widow of a man who died of mesothelioma, calling for a new trial after ruling that the plaintiff’s expert witness erred in telling the jury that every asbestos exposure must be considered a cause of mesothelioma.

The asbestos lawsuit centers on the allegation that workplace exposure to asbestos caused the plaintiff’s husband to contract mesothelioma and die. Asbestos is a naturally-occurring mineral that was widely used in industry because it is a superb thermal insulator and functionally fireproof, even under industrial conditions. However, asbestos is strongly linked to a number of severe health conditions, including mesothelioma, asbestos lung cancer, and other asbestos cancers.

In the asbestos trial in question, plaintiff Darlene N. sued a variety of companies involved in the manufacture and use of asbestos at jobsites where her late husband worked. She contended that every asbestos exposure her late husband, James N., had during his life contributed to the mesothelioma that eventually killed him in October of 2009.

During his life, James worked at a steel plant in Pennsylvania between 1973 and 2006. Two years after retiring, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the chest and/or abdomen that is tightly linked to asbestos exposure.

Much of the asbestos lawsuit hinged on testimony from an expert witness named Daniel DuPont. DuPont testified that every single exposure to asbestos must be considered a contributing factor to a patient developing mesothelioma. Lower courts had ruled that this testimony was sufficient to establish causation; that is, that the named defendants were responsible for James’s cancer and eventual death by producing asbestos. However, the Pennsylvania Superior Court accepted arguments that DuPont’s testimony was equivalent to similar testimony that had been thrown out in other asbestos lawsuits.

The Pennsylvania Superior Court also ruled that the size of the ruling indicated that the plaintiff’s lawyers had managed to appeal to emotion and prejudice the jury, leading to a disproportionate sum for the mesothelioma settlement, totaling millions of dollars when the facts of the case allegedly did not support such a ruling for this asbestos lawsuit.

Based on DuPont’s testimony advocating the “any breath” hypothesis of asbestos causation, as well as emotionally charged testimony from the Darlene’s lawyer, the Pennsylvania Superior Court sent the asbestos lawsuit back to a lower court for a retrial. This was partially intended to correct the denial of a motion for mistrial filed by the defendants in the asbestos lawsuit—an action ruled a serious oversight by the Superior Court.

The new trial for the asbestos lawsuit will take place in a court in Pennsylvania, to re-evaluate the circumstances that led to the death of James N. at a relatively young age from allegedly asbestos-related cancer.