Courtroom Success: Timothy Coughlin

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in June A. Taylor, et al. v. The American Chemistry Council, et al., No. 07-2422, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 17321 (1st Cir. Aug. 3, 2009) affirmed the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts’ ruling granting summary judgment in favor of defendants Goodrich Corporation, American Chemistry Council, The Dow Chemical Company, GenCorp, Inc., The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Union Carbide Corporation in a case alleging that a worker’s liver cancer had resulted from workplace exposure to vinyl chloride monomers (VCM).

The plaintiff alleged that her husband, based on the supplier defendants’ failure to adequately warn, had contracted cholangiocarcinoma, a form of liver cancer, as a result of occupational exposure to VCM between 1953 and 1989 while he was employed at a Monsanto PVC manufacturing facility in Indian Orchard, Massachusetts.

Timothy Coughlin, Thomas Feher, Karen Rubin and Andrea Daloia of Thompson Hine LLP in Cleveland, who represent a number of defendants on a national basis in vinyl chloride litigation, along with Mark Granger and Richard Neumeier of Morrison Mahoney in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts, were successful in obtaining this ruling.