Statute of Limitations in Asbestos Cases

Decisions in our library in which the court ruled on statute of limitations: 381 cases, by state. Each line gives what the court held, in our words; the law differs from state to state and changes, so read the opinion and talk to a lawyer before relying on any of them.

Pennsylvania

• Anderson v. Bondex Int'l (In re Asbestos Products Liability Litigation) (2009). An amended pleading relates back under Rule 15(c)(1)(B) only if it arises from the conduct, transaction or occurrence set out in the original pleading; facts differing in time and type do not relate back, and an amendment that would be time-barred is futile. Defendants' notice from discovery does not substitute for a common core of operative facts in the two pleadings.
• Abrams v. Pneumo Abex Corp. (2007). Plaintiffs who sued in the 1980s, under the pre-Marinari single-action rule, and recovered for increased risk and fear of cancer could not later sue a defendant they had not named in those suits after a cancer diagnosis. The earlier cancer-related claims concerned the same malignant disease, and the limitations period on them had long expired.
• Abrams v. Pneumo Abex Corporation (2006). Under the Marinari two-disease rule, which applies retroactively, a later lung cancer diagnosis starts a new two-year limitations period even if the plaintiff's earlier suit over a nonmalignant asbestos disease included claims for increased risk and fear of cancer.
• Gatling v. Eaton Corp. (2002). Under Pennsylvania's two-disease rule, a plaintiff who already sued for symptomatic nonmalignant asbestos disease cannot bring a second claim for another nonmalignant disease; the limitations period began when that disease was discovered.
• McCauley v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (1998). Under pre-Giffear Pennsylvania law (Marinari's separate disease rule), a plaintiff whose claim for asymptomatic pleural thickening is time-barred may still bring a timely suit for a separate, distinct asbestos disease such as asbestosis, within two years of discovering it. Simmons applies prospectively, including to limitations questions.
• Sporio v. Wcab (Songer Const.) (1998). Because the Act lists asbestosis and asbestos-related cancer together as one occupational disease, a worker who received lifetime benefits for asbestosis could have his widow collect death benefits for asbestos-related mesothelioma. This applied even though the disease and death fell outside the 300-week manifestation period.
• Baumgart v. Keene Bldg. Products Corp. (1995). Because the Court was evenly divided, the Superior Court's order was affirmed without a majority rationale. The opinion supporting affirmance reasoned that the discovery rule does not toll the two-year limitations period when the injury and its cause were reasonably ascertainable within that period.
• United Nat. Ins. v. France Refractories (1995). Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 5501(c), equity courts may be guided by statutes of limitation but may not rely on them alone to decide whether an equitable claim is timely. They must also apply the doctrine of laches.
• Giffear v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1993). Asymptomatic pleural thickening, without disabling consequences or manifest physical symptoms, is not a compensable injury and gives no cause of action. Damages for fear or increased risk of cancer are not recoverable where cancer is not present, because of the separate disease rule.
• Today's Exp., Inc. v. Barkan (1993). The discovery rule does not toll the statute of limitations when the plaintiff, using reasonable diligence such as hiring a professional, could have found the open and obvious asbestos; lack of awareness that asbestos was a problem does not excuse the delay.
• Marinari v. Asbestos Corp., Ltd. (1992). Pennsylvania follows a separate-disease rule in asbestos cases: discovery of a nonmalignant asbestos-related condition such as pleural thickening does not start the limitations period for a later, separately diagnosed lung cancer. Asymptomatic pleural thickening is itself an injury that supports a cause of action.
• United Nat. Ins. Co. v. JH France Refractories Co. (1992). A trial court sitting in equity may apply a statute of limitations to decide whether an action is timely, and a two-year limitations period governs an equitable action to rescind an insurance policy obtained by fraud. The discovery rule delays accrual to aid a diligent plaintiff and cannot be used to move accrual earlier.
• Manzi v. HK Porter Co. (1991). Pleural thickening is not an injury as a matter of law that triggers the limitations period and bars later suits; whether it is a compensable injury is a jury question, so a plaintiff whose jury finds no compensable injury may sue later if he develops a compensable asbestos disease.
• Morgan v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1986). In asbestos cases the two-year limitations period begins when the plaintiff knows or reasonably should know that he is injured and that another party's conduct caused the injury. Whether the plaintiff exercised due diligence is usually a jury question, and summary judgment is proper only when the undisputed facts show unreasonable delay as a matter of law.
• Lowe v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1985). Under Pennsylvania's discovery rule, summary judgment on limitations is improper where there is a genuine factual dispute over whether the plaintiff was told of his injury. The duty to inquire arises only after he has been given facts putting him on notice that he has a disease.
• Doe v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1984). A declaratory judgment action cannot be used to change existing law; under Pennsylvania's discovery rule the limitations period starts when the plaintiff knows or should know of an objectively ascertainable injury, its cause and the causal link, and a new period does not start when a new disease develops from the same conduct.
• Neal v. Carey Canadian Mines, Ltd. (1982). Suppliers of raw asbestos fiber owe a non-delegable duty to warn the plant workers who use it, even where the employer knows the hazard. An employer's deliberate failure to warn former workers, after being urged to do so, can be an intentional tort outside workers' compensation exclusivity. Punitive damages may be awarded to successive plaintiffs for outrageous conduct toward each.
• Staiano v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1982). Under the discovery rule, the two-year limitations period starts when the plaintiff knows or reasonably should know of his injury, its operative cause, and the causal link between them; it does not wait until he learns which manufacturers made the products. A later-developing related disease from the same exposure does not start a new period.
• Carbonaro v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1981). Under claim preclusion, a final judgment on a prior asbestos suit bars a later suit arising from the same transactions and exposure, even where a newly discovered cancer is alleged, because the earlier complaint embraced all present and future asbestos injuries.
• Grabowski v. Turner & Newall (1980). Under Pennsylvania law the limitations period begins when the plaintiff knows or should know that the injury was caused by asbestos exposure. A plaintiff's ignorance of the legal basis for a claim, or a lawyer's failure to advise suit, does not delay the start of the period.

Rhode Island

• Podedworny v. American Insulated Wire Corp. (2014). A bankruptcy plan may condition a corporate debtor's discharge under 11 U.S.C. § 1141(d); where the plan deferred discharge until the Hercules Policy was exhausted, the automatic stay stayed in place and the statute of limitations stayed tolled.
• LaPOINTE v. 3M Company (2007). Installing burners is an improvement to real property under the Rhode Island statute of repose, but servicing, repairing and maintaining them is not, so claims based on repair exposure are not repose-barred. Whether the burners contained asbestos and whether a duty to warn existed are jury questions.
• Westfall v. Whittaker, Clark & Daniels (1983). Amendments to Rhode Island's wrongful death limitations period do not apply retroactively, and the discovery rule concerns discovery of the wrongful act, not of a particular defendant. In a federal diversity case, John Doe pleading under R.I.Gen.Laws § 9-5-20 is allowed, but only if the fictitious defendants are duly served within a reasonable time.

Tennessee

• Russell v. Illinois Central Railroad Company (2015). Expert causation opinions based on differential diagnosis and a qualitative assessment of workplace exposure can be reliable and admissible even when the dose of the exposure was not quantified. Under 45 U.S.C. § 55 and the railroad health and welfare agreement, a railroad may set off medical benefits the plan paid, even though the employee paid part of the premium.
• Frazier v. Jackson (2014). Under Tennessee law, a malpractice claim accrues when the client suffers actual injury, such as losing a legal right or remedy, and knows or should know of it. Here the injuries occurred more than a year before suit, when the Illinois limitations period expired and when the settlements were reached.
• Lively EX rel. Lively v. Union Carbide Corporation (2013). When an employee is incapacitated from work by an occupational disease and later dies of that same disease, the date of death is not a new and separate date of injury, so a dependent's death benefits are calculated under the maximum benefit in effect on the earlier date of incapacity, less amounts already paid to the employee.
• Kelley v. Union Carbide Corporation (2011). A surviving spouse's workers' compensation death-benefit claim is independent of the employee's lifetime settlement, and the word "barred" in Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-306(a) refers only to the time limit for filing, not to a bar created by the employee's settlement.
• Woody v. AW Chesterton Company (2008). A release's language determines whether it covers later-discovered injuries from pre-release exposure; it can bar a later mesothelioma claim if it expressly covers unknown future diseases, and non-party tortfeasors within its terms may rely on it. It did not cover injuries from post-release exposure, so those claims survived.
• Ingram v. Aetna Cas. and Sur. Co. (1994). Under Tennessee's workers' compensation statutes, an employee with an occupational asbestos disease is entitled to medical benefits for reasonably required care, including periodic monitoring exams, even if not disabled. The limitations period for a disability claim runs only once the employee knows the disease affects his capacity to work to a compensable degree.
• Potts v. Celotex Corp. (1990). A cause of action for a separate and distinct asbestos-related disease does not accrue under TCA § 28-3-104 until that disease becomes manifest, and the single-injury rule does not make the earlier diagnosis of asbestosis start the clock on a later mesothelioma claim.
• Potts v. Celotex Corp. (1988). Under Tennessee's single-injury rule, a plaintiff cannot wait until all injurious effects are known; the one-year limitations period ran from the earlier asbestosis diagnosis, and mesothelioma did not start a new period even though it is a distinct disease.
• Johnson County, Tenn. v. US Gypsum Co. (1984). The asbestos exception in Tennessee's ten-year products liability ceiling, T.C.A. § 29-28-103(b), covers any action resulting from exposure to asbestos, including a school's property damage and economic loss claims, and a county school system gets no sovereign exemption from limitations periods for such claims.
• Clay v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp. (1983). Tennessee's 1979 amendment excluding asbestos-related disease actions from the ten-year products limitations statute applies, because the vested rights doctrine no longer bars it. A deceased witness's prior deposition is admissible under Rule 804(b)(1) when a party in the earlier case had a like motive to cross-examine, read generously as a 'predecessor in interest'.

Texas

• Felix v. Novelis Corporation (2021). Under the Texas borrowing statute, a nonresident plaintiff must sue within the Texas limitations period, and the Texas savings statute (§ 16.064) only suspends a limitations period that has not already run, so it cannot revive claims that expired before the first filing's dismissal.
• Jefferson County v. Farris (2018). Notice under the Tort Claims Act runs from the last incident essential to the claim, which in a latent asbestos disease case is the diagnosis or symptom manifestation. The Local Government Code presentment requirement is not a jurisdictional statutory prerequisite under Gov't Code section 311.034.
• Jefferson County v. Farris (1st District, 2018). Under the Texas Tort Claims Act, the six-month notice period runs from the incident giving rise to the claim, here the last asbestos exposure. Wrongful-death and survival claims are derivative of the decedent's own claim and are barred by immunity to the extent his claim would have been barred.
• Gilcrease v. Tesoro Petroleum Corp. (4th District, 2001). A nonresident plaintiff suing in Texas under section 71.031 must satisfy the repose statute of the foreign state where the wrongful act occurred, as well as its statute of limitations. Alaska's repose statute applied, and neither its hazardous waste exception nor its foreign body tolling provision covered asbestos exposure.
• In re National Gypsum Co. (2000). A channeling-order exhaustion requirement is judged by an equitable futility standard. Claimants need not exhaust a trust process that can pay only a few percent of tort-system values, so an unfunded trust cannot resolve their claims and the channeling order ends.
• Pustejovsky v. Rapid-American Corp. (2000). A person who sues on or settles a claim for a non-malignant asbestos-related disease is not precluded from a later action against another defendant for a distinct malignant asbestos-related condition. The malignant condition is a new cause of action, and limitations runs from when symptoms and the likely work-relatedness of that condition are, or should be, known.
• Pustejovsky v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp. (4th District, 1998). Under Texas's single-action rule and the discovery rule, a latent occupational disease claim accrues when the victim knows or should know of some work-related injury from asbestos exposure, so a later mesothelioma claim is not separately accrued; any exception must come from the Texas Supreme Court.
• Srite v. Owens-Illinois, Inc. (1993). A jury's award of zero damages is reviewed under the great-weight-and-preponderance standard, not a per se rule requiring damages whenever liability is found. For pre-1987 Texas cases, prejudgment interest on asbestos-disease damages runs from six months after the worker's last workplace exposure.
• Fibreboard Corp. v. Pool (6th District, 1991). In a Texas strict-liability failure-to-warn asbestos case, manufacturers are held to an expert's knowledge, and industry documents such as the Sumner Simpson papers may show what was known about asbestos hazards. Future medical expenses need proof of reasonable probability, and punitive damages need evidence of gross negligence or conscious indifference.
• Cimino v. Raymark Industries, Inc. (1990). In an asbestos case under Texas law, prejudgment interest runs from six months after the plaintiff's last asbestos exposure. Damages for a large class may be set by averaging jury verdicts from a statistically representative random sample without violating due process.
• Pecorino v. Raymark Industries, Inc. (9th District, 1988). Under Texas law as applied by the court, exposure to asbestos gives rise to a single cause of action that accrues when the first injury (here asbestosis) occurs, so a later mesothelioma claim from the same exposure cannot be split off and is time-barred. A broad release of all present and future claims from the exposure is also enforceable.
• Castorina v. Lykes Bros. SS Co., Inc. (1984). Under post-1972 LHWCA law, the date of injury for asbestosis is the date of manifestation, so the claim is limited to a § 905(b) negligence action. A vessel owner that neither knew nor should have known of a cargo's hazard and complied with shipping regulations is not negligent, and the danger of the cargo itself does not make the vessel unseaworthy.

Utah

• Tisco Intermountain v. Industrial Com'n of Utah (1987). Under the last-injurious-exposure rule, an award against an employer must rest on competent evidence of exposure during employment with that employer. An unsworn offer of proof is hearsay and cannot support the award, and liberal construction of the statute cannot fill the gap.

Virginia

• Llt Management LLC v. Emory (2025). A Virginia federal court predicted that Virginia's five-year limitations period for injury to property applies to a New Jersey-law trade libel claim, while the two-year fraud period barred the fraud count because the alleged falsity was discoverable with reasonable diligence when the article was published. A scientific journal article's statements about what the authors knew of study subjects' exposures can be pleaded as verifiable statements of fact rather than protected opinion.
• Parker v. Hunting Point Apartments, LLC (2015). A complaint must plead facts, not labels and conclusions, that make liability plausible. A tenant's asbestos injury claim fails where it does not say when, where, how or to what extent he was exposed, or what the defendants did, and does not allege a diagnosis of an asbestos-related injury.
• Kiser v. AW Chesterton Co. (2013). Va. Code § 8.01-249(4) created a discovery rule for asbestos claims but did not abolish the common law indivisible cause of action rule. A single asbestos-exposure cause of action therefore accrues when a physician first communicates a diagnosis of any asbestos-related disease.
• Chesapeake & Potomac Tel. v. Williams (1990). For an occupational disease, the average weekly wage under Code § 65.1-6 is based on the 52 weeks of wages from the last employment that exposed the claimant to the cause of the disease, not the wages at the date of diagnosis.