A Guide to Toxic Torts in Louisiana

June 25, 2024 @ 8:52 am

Chemicals are a part of our everyday lives. They’re in our personal care and beauty products. Our doctors prescribe them as medication. Our homes’ building materials are treated with them, and cleaning products rely on them. In Louisiana, companies using or even creating them operate near our neighborhoods and employ our family members.

Sometimes, however, exposure to one of these substances does irreparable harm. Because this kind of harm results in personal injury, it falls within the realm of tort law. Because it deals with toxic or harmful substances, it also crosses into the area of environmental law. Here’s what you need to know about toxic torts in Louisiana and why you should only trust a Louisiana toxic tort attorney to handle your case.

Toxic Torts: What Are They, Exactly?

The Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute formally defines a tort as “an act or omission that gives rise to injury or harm to another and amounts to a civil wrong for which courts impose liability.” Under tort law, if someone does something—or fails to do something—and someone else is injured or harmed, the party responsible owes financial compensation to the person harmed or injured.

While criminal law centers on punishing offenders through public justice, tort law is a form of civil law that focuses on shifting “the burden of loss from the injured party to the party who is at fault or better suited to bear the burden of the loss.” To do that, there are three basic types of torts:

• Intentional: Someone intentionally does something or fails to do something and harms someone else.
• Negligent: Someone violates a duty they owed to the person harmed.
• Strict Liability: Regardless of a party’s intent or duty, the harm caused is so significant that the party responsible is liable.

In addition to these three basic types of torts are numerous specific torts to address various wrongs. One of these specific types is toxic torts. Toxic torts specifically address the problem of people being exposed to dangerous substances that may have caused harm.

What Qualifies as a Toxic Tort in Louisiana?

Toxic tort law can be complex because it deals with legal claims of exposure to harmful substances like chemicals, pharmaceuticals or environmental pollutants, for example. There are a wide variety of different toxic substances, and each has its own unique properties, exposure pathways and health effects. 

Linking them to an injury or health condition typically requires detailed scientific and medical evidence because in some cases, the effects of an exposure may take years or even decades to manifest. Meanwhile, establishing causation can be difficult when multiple factors might have contributed to a health issue.

Causation

The cause of harm is a central point in toxic tort cases. Specifically, causation seeks to establish a direct cause-effect relationship between an exposure and the harm that occurs. Louisiana law uses a test of “proximate relation.” A situation must meet a certain set of conditions to prove proximate relation, or reasonable cause:

• A specific event must have occurred. Something happened that exposed you to a particular harmful substance, for example.
• The specific event was unbroken by any intervening event. Other things that might have caused a similar problem did not happen.
• The specific event produced the resulting harm. A reaction that was harmful resulted. That reaction may be immediate or delayed.
• The resulting harm would not have occurred without the specific event.

To cover these conditions, a plaintiff—the person harmed and seeking compensation—must prove two components of causation: general causation and specific causation.

• General Causation: You must prove that the substance you were exposed to is capable of causing a particular injury or condition— essentially that it is toxic.
• Specific Causation: You must prove that you were exposed to the substance in some way—directly breathing or touching it or being in the vicinity of a spill or release.

Examples of Toxic Torts

All sorts of harmful substances—and exposure to them—fall under toxic tort law. For example:

• Workers in construction, shipbuilding or automotive repair may develop mesothelioma or asbestosis due to prolonged exposure to asbestos fibers.
• Residents living near a chemical plant, railroad or highway may suffer health issues after a hazardous chemical spill contaminates their water supply or releases toxic vapors.
• Patients may experience severe side effects or health complications from a prescription drug that was inadequately tested or improperly marketed.
• Agricultural workers or people living in agricultural areas may develop illnesses from prolonged exposure to toxic pesticides, herbicides, agricultural runoff or other farm-related contaminants.
• Communities affected by air, soil or water pollution from nearby industrial sites may experience increased rates of cancer, respiratory illnesses or other health conditions.
• Children living in older homes with lead-based paint may suffer developmental issues or neurological damage due to lead exposure.
• Miners, construction workers or stone cutters may develop silicosis or other respiratory diseases from inhaling silica dust.
• Tenants in apartment buildings may suffer respiratory issues, allergies or other health problems due to toxic mold growth from poor building maintenance.
• Plastics industry workers may develop liver cancer or other health problems from exposure to vinyl chloride, a chemical used in making PVC.
• Workers in oil refining or rubber manufacturing may develop leukemia or other blood disorders from prolonged benzene exposure.

Acute Versus Latent Injuries

The consequences of an exposure can vary considerably depending on the chemical and timeframe. An exposure can result in acute injuries, latent injuries or both.

Acute injuries happen immediately following exposure or shortly after, and the harm or injury is usually readily apparent and identifiable.

Latent injuries take a much longer period of time to develop—up to years or even decades. They are often the result of small exposures that accumulate over time, so the source of the problem can be more difficult to identify and prove.

This distinction between acute and latent can be particularly important when statutes of limitations are involved. Nevertheless, both types of injuries are covered under toxic tort law.

Statute of Limitations for Toxic Torts in Louisiana

Louisiana sets its statute of limitations at one year for personal injury cases, but understanding how that year may be calculated in toxic torts in Louisiana is important.

As a rule, the one-year countdown begins on the date of exposure to the harmful substance. This is typically the case for acute injuries where the injury or illness immediately follows an exposure event.

In less clear-cut cases, the one-year countdown may begin with the date when a person became aware that an injury had actually occurred. In latent injury cases involving conditions like cancer, for example, that date may be well after the exposure, and in some cases, that date may even be years following a potential toxic tort victim’s death—when survivors realize what actually may have caused their loved one’s death.

While some leeway does exist within the limited time to act, speaking with a qualified toxic tort lawyer as soon as possible after an event or the recognition of a probable event is crucial to your claim’s success.

Exclusive Remedy: Workers’ Compensation Versus Toxic Tort

If an exposure happens at work, the rules surrounding compensation for that exposure can become complex due to a basic rule of exclusive remedy.

Employers pay for workers’ compensation insurance so that if an employee is injured at work—regardless of fault—the employer’s workers’ compensation insurance will cover the injured employee’s medical costs, lost wages or the ability to work, vocational rehabilitation and even death benefits to surviving dependents if the employee dies of the injury, for example. In exchange, employees waive tort claims against their employer and fellow employees.

However, employees do not waive their ability to sue third parties, and third parties are basically defined as anyone involved “from whom workers’ compensation cannot be recovered.” When it comes to toxic torts, that third party may be the manufacturer of defective equipment that caused a spill or or another company whose operations in the area interfered with a task.

The rule of exclusive remedy does have an exception. If the injury of the worker can be proved to be intentional, exclusive remedy no longer applies. An injury may be considered intentional if the person who acted either “consciously desired the physical result of his act or knew that the result was substantially certain to follow from that conduct.” If their injury is deemed intentional, an employee can collect both workers’ compensation benefits and compensation under toxic tort law.

The Value of Working With a Toxic Tort Lawyer

Toxic tort law offers victims and their families a way to pursue compensation for the harm an exposure to a dangerous substance caused. Yet, the process of gaining that compensation has many challenges:

• Proving a link between exposure to a particular substance and a resulting injury often requires assembling detailed scientific and medical evidence—including expert testimony.
• Navigating Louisiana’s regulatory frameworks and the implications for legal liability requires specialized knowledge.
• Louisiana has many industrial activities—particularly petrochemical plants and oil refineries. The industrial framework is so large and widespread, with so many parties involved, that knowing who may be at fault can be difficult. In fact, multiple parties may bear liability.
• The effects of toxic exposure may take years to manifest, adding layers of complexity to proving compliance with Louisiana’s statute of limitations.

An experienced toxic tort attorney in Louisiana can best advise you on how to get started with filing a claim as well as gathering the evidence needed, getting evaluated by a healthcare professional and documenting the harm suffered. The more information you have in advance, the more thorough our initial review of your case can be.

Build Your Case Today

Whether you know or feel that exposure to a harmful exposure caused your injury or illness—or the injury, illness or death of someone you care about—reach out to the Louisiana toxic tort attorneys at Morrow, Morrow, Ryan, Bassett and Haik. 

Call us at (800)725-8836, or schedule your free consultation online today. We can help you figure out who may be responsible and identify exactly what we can do to get you the compensation you deserve.

Sources

https://www.mmrbhlawoffice.com/
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