Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving mesothelioma victims and a shipyard’s parent company. The victims want to pursue asbestos exposure claims against Carmeuse Lime Inc., parent company of dissolved shipyard operator Dravo LLC, but a lower court dismissed the case based on statutory time limitations. A split appellate panel ruled that factual disputes exist about whether the two companies effectively operated as one entity before Dravo was dissolved nearly a decade ago, leaving it to the high court to resolve the issue.
Mesothelioma Victims Say Company Manipulated the Law to Avoid Liability
The mesothelioma victims argue that Carmeuse Lime stripped Dravo of its assets so it would be unable to pay damages for the asbestos-contaminated operations it engaged in between the 1940s and 1980s. They assert that after acquiring the shipyard in a 1998 merger, Carmeuse Lime transferred a $250 million lime mining asset to itself for only $14 million and waived a $129 million debt owed to it by Dravo, and relinquished over $100 million in excess insurance coverage.
To demonstrate that the two companies had functioned as a single entity despite maintaining separate legal identities on paper, the mesothelioma victims presented evidence to the lower court, and then to the appellate court, that all of Dravo’s corporate officers became Carmeuse Lime employees after the acquisition.
Mesothelioma Defendant Argues that Dissolution Statute Bars Claims
Carmeuse Lime argued that Dravo’s mesothelioma liability is barred by the state’s two-year statute of limitations for dissolved corporations and that the lawsuit circumvents legislative intent. The company’s brief to the state Supreme Court asserts that the legislatively-created deadline provides a definitive end to tort claims, not an opportunity to search for new defendants, and that no court has declared an exception to this time bar. The mesothelioma victims respond that Carmeuse Lime is the true entity behind Dravo’s operations, and that the subsidiary only existed on paper, as a legal façade.
The appellate court found the mesothelioma victims had produced sufficient evidence of Carmeuse Lime’s control and having shifted assets to itself, leaving Dravo with inadequate resources to satisfy asbestos liabilities, and that these actions meet Pennsylvania’s test for piercing the corporate veil and further investigating the inner machinations of the company. A dissenting judge wrote that the mesothelioma plaintiffs failed to file within the mandatory two-year period after Dravo’s July 2018 dissolution, making their claims statutorily time-barred regardless of any alleged corporate misconduct or unity between parent and subsidiary.
An increasing number of asbestos companies are using questionable legal maneuvers to evade responsibility for mesothelioma diagnoses, and this makes it essential that victims have knowledgeable, experienced professionals working on their behalf. For information on how the Patient Advocates at Mesothelioma.net can help, contact us today at 1-800-692-8608.
