Roussel
A hearing set on a bankrupt asbestos defendant's motion to dismiss was continued without date in Orleans Parish Civil District Court.
Louisiana residents Edward and Anna Alberes are suing 29 companies – including Exxon-Mobil, General Electric, Shell Oil, DOW Chemical, BASF, and the McCarty Corp. – for allegedly exposing Edward Alberes to asbestos while he worked as an insulator and pipe fitter from 1953 to 2006.
The hearing, on defendant Terra Mississippi Nitrogen Inc.'s motion, had been scheduled for July 30 in Chief Justice Lloyd Medley Jr.'s court.
LaPlace attorneys Gerolyn Roussel, Perry Roussel Jr., Jonathan Clement, Lauren Clement and Leonard Fisher III are representing Edward and Anna Alberes.
The original 43-page petition for damages was filed in October 2008.
New Orleans attorneys Neil Abramson and Curt Rome filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that Terra Mississippi had filed for bankruptcy in May 2003 and cannot be held liable for the plaintiff's asbestosis allegedly contracted in his work for the company in the 1960s and 1970s. The motion also noted that the same motion for dismissal by Terra Mississippi has been presented 23 other times in Orleans Parish and asserted res judicata, meaning those cases had been decided.
Plaintiff counsel responded to the defense motion to dismiss by stating that Edward Alberes' asbestosis was not diagnosed until July 2008 and that his cause of action could not "have been included in the [defendant's] Chapter 11 bankruptcy."
On July 30, plaintiff counsel submitted a 177-page witness and exhibit list.
No trial date has been set for the case.