Mesothelioma Help Cancer News
Belluck & Fox Defeats Challenge to New York Mesothelioma Verdict
New York, NY, May 26, 2012 — A recent ruling by the New York Court of Appeals has upheld a $1.5 million asbestos verdict obtained by the New York mesothelioma lawyers of Belluck & Fox, LLP, including the landmark finding by the jury that the defendant, Fisher Controls International, LLC, acted with a reckless disregard towards the safety of the plaintiff, Ronald Drabczyk.
The case is Drabczyk v. Fisher Controls International, LLC (Erie County Index No. 2005/1583).
Drabczyk, died from his exposure to asbestos in Buffalo, NY in 2005. Despite only being assessed a small percentage of fault, the finding that Fisher was reckless means it is liable for the entire judgment under New York law.
In the May 8 court order, the Court of Appeals denied a motion that had been filed by Fisher, seeking to set aside the reckless disregard finding made by an Erie County jury in October 2009.
In declining to address Fisher’s motion, the Court of Appeals also declined to address arguments made by Crane Co., another valve manufacturer who had filed a brief in support of Fisher and pleaded with the Court of Appeals to decide an issue that could have benefited both Fisher and Crane Co. in future asbestos cases.
The Court of Appeals’ ruling upholds the jury’s finding that Fisher had acted with a reckless disregard for the man’s safety.
As a result of the reckless misconduct finding, under New York law, the Iowa-based valve manufacturer is liable for the full $1.5 million amount of the judgment (reduced by settlements received by the plaintiff from other parties).
“This is the first asbestos verdict in the country against Fisher for injury resulting from exposure to asbestos in Fisher products,” said Seth Dymond, a New York mesothelioma attorney and a Belluck & Fox, LLP partner who handled the appeal for the law firm.
“This verdict reaffirms that corporations that fail to warn workers of known dangers in their products will be held fully accountable for the damage they cause,” Dymond said. “And if they act with a reckless disregard for workers’ safety, they will be responsible for the full weight of the verdict under the laws of the State of New York no matter their percentage of fault.”
According to court documents, Mr. Drabczyk had worked at the Hooker Chemical plant in Niagara Falls, NY, from 1970 to 1996. He repaired and refurbished valves sold by Fisher, which is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Emerson Electric Co. More than half of the valves that Fisher sold to the repairman’s employer contained asbestos. Further, Fisher supplied asbestos-containing replacement parts to the plant for use in its valves that further exposed Mr. Drabczyk to lethal doses of asbestos.
According to Dymond, in October 2004, the valve repairman was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the chest that is caused by exposure to asbestos. He filed the personal injury action in Erie County Supreme Court before he passed away in November 2005, just 13 months after his diagnosis.
After a four-week trial, the jury returned a verdict in October 2009, apportioning five percent of the liability for the man’s damages, including pain and suffering, to Fisher. The same jury found that Fisher had acted with reckless disregard for the man’s safety.
Under New York law, a defendant is only liable for its share of fault unless, among other factors, it is found to have acted recklessly. Once that finding is made, the defendant can be held liable for the full amount of damages.
Belluck & Fox, LLP partner Jordan Fox led the trial team that obtained the verdict and the judgment, which was entered in September 2010. Dymond handled the post-verdict litigation for the New York personal injury firm.
The Supreme Court of New York denied Fisher’s motion to set aside the verdict in July 2010. The Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department, affirmed in part in February 2012. The Court of Appeals’ May 8 ruling denied Fisher’s motion to review the case.
The ruling comes after two Belluck & Fox, LLP mesothelioma verdicts – a $32 million verdict in Dummitt v. A.W. Chesterton (No. 190196/10) and a $19.5 million verdict in Konstantin v. 630 Third Avenue Associates (No. 190134/10) – were listed among the top 10 New York verdicts of 2011.
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Research Focuses on Treatments That Target Mesothelioma Tumors
For 15 years, Dr. Raffit Hassan, a clinical oncologist at the National Cancer Institute, has been researching the protein mesothelin and its use in the treatment of mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest cavity and abdomen associated with exposure to asbestos.
A protein, mesothelin is present in normal tissue. But certain types of malignant tumors including mesothelioma express high levels of the mesothelin, making it a useful target for tumor-specific drugs. The ultimate goal of the National Cancer Institute is to develop new treatments for mesothelioma and other forms of cancer.
“Mesothelioma is not a very common disease, but it’s a tumor for which we really need to develop a good treatment,” Dr. Hassan said during a recent teleconference sponsored by the Meso Foundation, which provides information, research funding and advocacy for mesothelioma victims.
The first drug targeting mesothelin that Hassan has studied in clinical trials involving mesothelioma patients was Amatuximab, an experimental drug developed by Morphotek, a Pennsylvania company that develops cancer treatments. The treatment is an immunotoxin,a human-made protein that is designed to bind to cancer tumor cells, then inject toxins to kill them.
“I have been working on the same project for 10 years,” Dr. Hassan said. “I think we are starting to see some good results.”
The drug has been through phase I and II clinical trials and the results will be presented this summer. It has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The researchers are evaluating whether the drug when combined with chemotherapy drugs is more effective at controlling mesothelioma.
“The results show the drug is safe and there is activity,” Hassan said. “To be really sure the drug benefits patients we’ll need to do a randomized clinical trial. That will be the next step.”
Approximately 3,000 people are diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma each year. Most are older workers, retired workers and veterans were exposed to asbestos dust in the workplace or during military service. Symptoms of mesothelioma typically take 20 to 40 years to appear. But the cancer is aggressive and more effective treatments are needed to control the disease and extend the lives of mesothelioma patients.
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Gene Therapy Moves Scientists One Step Closer to a Mesothelioma Cure
Finding a cure for mesothelioma did not seem possible just several years ago. The asbestos-caused cancer is extremely aggressive, and the cancerous cells invade the lungs and spread throughout the body often rendering standard cancer treatments ineffective against the disease. However, with the recent advances in gene therapy, now being touted as the next frontier in medicine, there is new hope in the medical field that cures are on the horizon for patients with rare and incurable diseases such as mesothelioma.
Ricki Lewis, a New York-based geneticist and author, explores this “next frontier” in her latest book The Forever Fix. The book follows the journey of the use of gene therapy to restore the vision of a young boy who was nearly blind from a hereditary disorder. The doctors replaced the single defective gene in the New York boy’s eyes that prevented his eyes from using vitamin A to send visual signals to his brain. Once the defective gene was replaced, the boy’s vision was restored and no further treatments or surgery were required.
“The goal of gene therapy is to replace faulty instructions,” said Lewis, who has a Ph.D in genetics from Indiana University. “It’s not right for every disease. But it is an approach that can be considered some day along with drugs, surgery and everything else.”
Most rare diseases, of which there are nearly 7,000 in the United States, are caused by a single gene defect, making them better candidates for gene therapy, Lewis said. Cancers, however, are often caused by a combination of genes as well as environmental factors. In the case of mesothelioma, asbestos is known to cause the disease, but researchers now believe a person’s genetics may determine whether they will actually contract the disease.
Lewis points to a study led by Dr. Jill Ohar of Wake Forest University, first reported in Oct. 2009, where as part of a new mesothelioma clinical trial, her team is investigating whether a person’s genes increase the risk of developing mesothelioma. Ohar began her research when she found “that there is a strong tendency for mesothelioma to run in families and it tends to be associated with a family history of cancer, which suggests a genetic susceptibility.”
“Getting at the basis of why one person develops mesothelioma and another person doesn’t, that is going to hold a clue to really fighting it,” Lewis said. “Then we will know what to do the gene therapy on.”
Mesothelioma victims typically show disease symptoms years or even decades after exposure to asbestos in an industrial or manufacturing workplace. The disease is eventually fatal, but aggressive therapy may prolong the lives of patients who are diagnosed early. Hopefully soon, mesothelioma patients will enjoy long, productive lives through research on genetics.
Sources :
- The Forever Fix
http://us.macmillan.com/theforeverfix/RickiLewis - mesothelioma clinical trial
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01590472?term=mesothelioma+and+genetics&rank=1
Sleeping Pill May Be “Potent” Agent in Fight Against Malignant Mesothelioma
Mesothelioma is one of nearly 7,000 diseases that is designated as an ‘orphan’ disease. The distinction is given to a disease or disorder that affects fewer than 200,000 Americans at any given time. Currently, rare diseases affect over 30 million Americans. Mesothelioma is diagnosed in just 3,000 Americans each year, with just as many dying from the disease.
According to government statistics, between 85 and 90 percent of orphan diseases are serious or life-threatening, yet only about 200 of them currently have any effective treatments. Now, according to a recent study, a treatment for one disorder may be beneficial in fighting mesothelioma and other cancers.
Researchers at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle report that a drug that is used to treat sleep disorders “appears to be a potent inhibitor of cancer cells” and could lead to the “development of safer, more-effective cancer therapies.”
The researchers, led by Carla Grandori, M.D., Ph.D., an investigator in the Hutchinson Center’s Human Biology Division, used advanced genetic research techniques which allowed them to find the “Achilles heel” in the oncogene known as “Myc,” which is hyperactive in many cancers, including lung and liver. Myc is considered untreatable due to its resistance to cancer drugs.
“Their [Myc-driven cells] rapid growth and division damages their DNA, and they rely on other genes to repair that damage. Disabling those genes can cripple the cancer’s ability to grow,” said Grandori.
Further research found nearly 100 genes that could be disabled, or blocked, and would lead to the death of the Myc-driven cancer cells. Normal cells were not affected leading Grandori and the team to conclude that “each of these genes is a potential target for a new, nontoxic cancer therapy.”
The sleeping pill was found when the team conducted a web search for a compound that inhibited the CSNK1 epsilon gene that was found to kill cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue when blocked. When Myc-driven cancerous mice were injected with the sleeping pill compound the mice “thrived” and the tumors shrunk away.
Grandori said the compound was “just sitting on the shelf. It is possible that the next great breakthrough in cancer therapy is already out there, sitting on a shelf, hiding in plain view.”
Grandori believes there are countless more potential cancer-fighting agents, or treatments for other diseases and disorders available. The use of the sophisticated genetic research techniques, like the ones her team employed, Grandori said, “could speed up the development of new cancer therapies a thousand-fold.”
Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer, caused by exposure to airborne asbestos fibers, that is very challenging to treat. The cancer has a complex growth pattern often ruling out surgery and radiation therapy since pinpointing the malignant cells is difficult. In addition, the disease is chemo-resistant, leading physicians to prescribe chemotherapy as palliative care as opposed to curative. A drug that can halt growth of mesothelioma cells would be a major breakthrough in the treatment of mesothelioma patients.
The findings are published in the May 21 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Memorial Day is Time to Honor America’s Veterans
The long Memorial Day weekend is one of the most popular holiday weekends in the United States. Celebrating the start of summer, many families head to the beach or to the shopping malls for special bargains. However, it is important that Americans not forget the meaning of Memorial Day and take the time to honor our fallen soldiers, whether it was on the battlefield or long after from injuries or illnesses, such as mesothelioma, suffered from their service.
MemorialDay.org reminds U.S. citizens: “On Memorial Day we need to stop and pay with sincere conviction our respects for those who died protecting and preserving the freedoms we enjoy, for we owe those honored dead more than we can ever repay.”
Mesothelioma is a rare cancer, affecting the lining of the lungs, caused by exposure to asbestos. Although nearly 3,000 new cases are reported annually in the U.S., statistics show that military veterans account for over one-third of those cases. Unfortunately, mesothelioma is extremely difficult to treat and is virtually impossible to cure.
Between the 1940s and 1970s asbestos was popular with the military. During that time asbestos was used for insulation in both military buildings, including mess halls and barracks, and ships. It was also used as an insulator around hot water heaters and cooling systems, and in the gaskets placed inside airplane engines and large machinery.
The New York mesothelioma law firm of Belluck & Fox, LLP has seen the devastation a diagnosis of mesothelioma can cause to veterans and their families, and they are committed to helping these families get compensation for their disease. In August 2011, Belluck & Fox, LLP represented a Navy veteran diagnosed with mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos aboard ships. The firm won the man a $32 million verdict, which ranked among the five largest New York verdicts of 2011.
Mesothelioma has a long incubation period, so now, veteran’s over the age of 60 are beginning to show symptoms. Contracting mesothelioma is a life-time risk for some of our veterans, and Memorial Day is just one day when Americans can take the time to thank veterans for all they endured for our freedom.
Following is an excerpt from President Barack Obama’s 2012 Memorial Day address:
“No words can ever bring back a loved one who has been lost. No ceremony can do justice to their memory. No honor will ever fill their absence.
But on Memorial Day, we come together as Americans to let these families and veterans know that they are not alone. We give thanks for those who sacrificed everything so that we could be free. And we commit ourselves to upholding the ideals for which so many patriots have fought and died.”
Thank you to all who have bravely served our country!
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