Stanley Morton was long retired from the Newport News shipyard when he was diagnosed with asbestos-related cancer in April 2006.
Throughout his 33-year shipyard career — much of it as an electrician — the Georgia native and Middle Peninsula resident never knew anything was amiss.
But having breathed in millions of tiny asbestos fibers over the years, Stanley began feeling sick in late 2005. He had a lung removed and was dead by December 2007, at age 72.
A two-week jury trial now in the closing stage in Newport News Circuit Court accuses oil giant Exxon — which owned some of the ships Morton worked on at the Newport News yard — of negligently causing his death.
The suit against a company that owned the ships — rather than a supplier of parts — is a new twist on asbestos litigation in Newport News. Most of the dozens of cases brought annually are against the parts providers rather than the shipping lines and ship owners.
The suit, brought by Nancy Morton, Stanley Morton's widow, contends that Exxon knew of the risks of asbestos as early as 1937, and didn't take any steps to prevent harm.
Her attorney, Bobby Hatten, said in closing arguments Monday that because workers wouldn't immediately drop dead from breathing the fibers — as they might if they walked into a gas-filled tank — Exxon didn't bother to fix the problem. Asbestos can lie dormant in the lungs for decades before suddenly being expressed.
"That Exxon ship was going to be gone long before anyone got sick," Hatten told the eight-member jury. "... Exxon wanted the ships in and out of the yard at the cheapest price and the least amount of time. ... They had a duty to care, and they didn't care."
Hatten, of the Newport News firm of Patten, Wornom, Hatten & Diamonstein, asked the jury to award $10 million in damages against Exxon, plus more than $500,000 in medical costs.
Bill Armstrong, the Oakland, Calif., lawyer who defended Exxon, now Exxon-Mobil, during the trial, asserted that the company was unaware of asbestos' dangers on ships until the late 1970s.
It's wrong, he said, to place total blame on only one company — and make them dish out millions of dollars — for asbestos exposure that could have come from multiple vessels.
Morton worked on many kinds of ships over the years, including new construction Navy aircraft carriers such as the USS America and USS Enterprise, cargo ships and other vessels. He was likely exposed to lots of asbestos along the way, Armstrong said.
"The sad fact," Armstrong said, is that with all his exposure, Stanley was going to die of mesothelioma "whether or not he ever worked on an Exxon ship."
Hatten described Morton as a "poor country boy" from Georgia, a hard worker who settled in Gloucester after a stint in the Navy.
He was the father of four children — three from his first marriage, and a stepdaughter from his second marriage after his first wife died. He also had several grandchildren.
Hatten contended that Morton had a lot of life and love left in him when mesothelioma suddenly came along, robbing him of time with his family and imposing a severely painful death.
Morton was the family patriarch, Hatten said. "Like a giant oak tree that has fallen, there's an empty spot in the sky where it used to be," he added.
During the trial, Morton, who filed his lawsuit before he died, appeared to jurors on a previously recorded videotape, speaking of his work at the yard.
Though he didn't work directly with asbestos products, the suit asserts that Morton was exposed when other workers ripped asbestos insulation and other parts from piping in engine and boiler rooms.
Hatten said Exxon began instituting asbestos regulations at its refineries nationwide in 1937 — teaching workers how to avoid the dangers. He cited a 1964 Exxon letter in which a company official spoke of the dangers of asbestos, even to those not working directly with the fibers.
But the company did not warn workers at shipyards or even on its own tanker crews, Hatten said.
He said that mesothelioma is a cumulative cancer — in which all the exposure adds up to create the problem. But it also affects different people differently, with some people susceptible to mesothelioma from only a small amount of exposure.
In that way, Hatten said, the blame for the disease is "indivisible," with Morton's work on Exxon vessels a "substantially contributing factor" to Morton's death.
"It's a real piece, not an imaginary piece, of the cause of Mr. Morton's illness," Hatten said. Because other ships also had asbestos "does not relieve Exxon of its liability."
Armstrong said there was lots of supposition — but no evidence — to prove that Morton was actually exposed to asbestos fibers while working on any Exxon vessels. No one testified, he said, that they saw Morton in Exxon boiler rooms as workers ripped out insulation nearby.
On top of that, Armstrong contended it was the shipyard's responsibility — not Exxon's — to implement safety rules regarding asbestos fibers. That ran contrary to Hatten's assertions that Exxon's port engineer — an Exxon employee — was in charge.
"The shipyard had control, and no witness said otherwise," Armstrong said. The yard, he said, ran "all aspects of safety," from hard hats to welding fumes to asbestos.
Because the Newport News shipyard is part of the federal worker's compensation program, the yard cannot under law be sued for most asbestos-related injuries, an attorney said.
Closing arguments took the entire day Monday. Deliberations are expected to begin this morning.
From The Daily Press
