Stevens v. CBS Corporation (W.D. Wash., Aug. 29, 2012)

Our plain-English summary of Stevens v. CBS Corporation (U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, August 29, 2012).

Roland Stevens and his wife Shirley sued CBS Corporation and other companies in federal court in Tacoma, Washington. Mr. Stevens served as a boilermaker in the Navy from 1954 to 1974 and then did similar work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard until 1988. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in November 2011. The complaint alleges he came into contact with asbestos-containing materials in equipment made by Carrier, by IMO Industries' predecessor DeLaval, and by Warren Pumps. This order dealt only with discovery. The plaintiffs asked the court to compel responses to interrogatories and document requests. The defendants objected, and IMO and Warren Pumps did not respond to the motions. The court found the defendants wrong to say there was no evidence Mr. Stevens worked with their products, and wrong to limit discovery to ships already known to have their equipment. It also found the request for every asbestos component sold over thirty years too broad. It granted the motions for the Navy and shipyard vessels and for 1954 to 1984, and denied them for anything beyond that.

We wrote this summary from the court's opinion with the help of AI. It is not the court's wording, and it is not legal advice. The full opinion is below.

The decision

• Court: U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington
• Decided: August 29, 2012
• Docket: Case No. 3:11-cv-06073 RBL
• Stage: Discovery or evidence ruling
• State: Washington

Outcome. The court granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs' motions to compel discovery from Carrier, IMO Industries and Warren Pumps, limiting most requests to equipment on the Navy and PSNS vessels Mr. Stevens worked on between 1954 and 1984.

What the court held. Discovery under Rule 26 may reach equipment on the vessels the plaintiff worked on during his years of exposure, but requests for every asbestos-containing component sold to all customers over thirty years are overly broad and unduly burdensome without more than conclusory reasoning.

Issues decided: The Bare-Metal Defense, Trial Procedure and Discovery.

The people and their exposure

• Roland L. Stevens: mesothelioma

The defendants

• Carrier Corporation (manufacturer)
• IMO Industries, Inc. (manufacturer)
• Warren Pumps, LLC (manufacturer)
• CBS Corporation (manufacturer)

The court's opinion

The text below is Google Scholar's copy of the court's opinion, a public record. Numbers in brackets, such as [*921], mark where each page of the printed reporter begins.

ROLAND L. STEVENS and SHIRLEY J. STEVENS, Plaintiffs,

v.

CBS CORPORATION, etal., Defendants.

Case No. 3:11-cv-06073 RBL.

August 29, 2012.

United States District Court, W.D. Washington, Tacoma.

ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS' MOTIONS TO COMPEL DISCOVERY

[Dkts. #67, 71, 75]

RONALD B. LEIGHTON, District Judge.

THIS MATTER is before the Court on Plaintiffs' Motions to Compel Discovery from Carrier Corporation [Dkt. #67], IMO Industries, Inc. [Dkt. #71], and Warren Pumps, LLC [Dkt. #75]. As the three individual motions raise substantially the same issues, they will be addressed together. After reviewing the pleadings submitted,[1] Plaintiffs' Motions are GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. Nature of the Case

Plaintiff Roland Stevens served as a boilermaker in the U.S. Navy from 1954 until 1974. (Pl.'s Mot. to Compel at 2, Dkt. #67.) He inspected, maintained, repaired, and overhauled boilers and their associated pumps, valves, forced draft blowers, and other equipment on dozens of Navy vessels. (Id.) After retiring from the Navy, he continued to do similar work at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) until 1988. (Id.) Mr. Stevens was diagnosed with mesothelioma in November, 2011. (Id.)

The Complaint alleges that throughout Mr. Stevens' career in the Navy and at PSNS he contacted asbestos-containing materials in Defendants' equipment: Carrier refrigeration equipment and forced draft blowers; pumps and steam turbines manufactured by IMO Industries, Inc.'s predecessor-in-interest, DeLaval Turbine, Inc.; and pumps and steam turbines manufactured by Warren Pumps, LLC. (Complaint at 2, Dkt. #1.) Plaintiffs allege that Defendants supplied and repaired asbestos-containing components and replacement parts for equipment at Mr. Stevens' various worksites. (Id.) Plaintiffs anticipate Defendants will put forth a "bare metal" defense—that the components and replacement parts they supplied to Mr. Stevens' worksites did not contain asbestos. (Pl.'s Reply to Def. Carrier Corp.'s Opp. at 5, Dkt. #78.) B. Discovery Dispute

Plaintiffs seek to compel Carrier, IMO, and Warren Pumps to provide substantive responses to their interrogatories and requests for production (RFP). (Pl.'s Mot. to Compel at 1, Dkt. #67). The interrogatories request information about asbestos-containing components and replacement parts made by Defendants, revenues from those components and repair work, and the locations where Defendants' personnel assisted with maintenance of the equipment. (Knudson Decl., Ex. 1, Dkt. #67 at 5-16.) The RFPs seek documents relating to Defendants' equipment on eleven U.S. Navy vessels,[2] catalogues, annual reports, and contracts with the United States and Navy Shipyards. (Id.)

Defendant Carrier renews its original objections that the requests are vague, overly broad, unduly burdensome, irrelevant, and not reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence. (Def. Carrier Corp.'s Opp. to Pl.'s Mot. to Compel at 6-8.)

Carrier provided some supplemental responses to Plaintiffs' RFPs. (Id. at 4.) Defendants IMO and Warren Pumps objected to the interrogatories but did not respond to Plaintiffs' Motions to Compel.

II. DISCUSSION

Under Federal Rule 26, governing the scope of permissible discovery:

Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense. . . . For good cause, the court may order discovery of any matter relevant to the subject matter involved in the action. Relevant information need not be admissible at the trial if the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1).

In their responses to interrogatories, Defendants each incorrectly object that there is no evidence Mr. Stevens worked with or around their products at his worksites. Prior to the request for interrogatories, Plaintiffs produced information in the Complaint, the First Amended Complaint, the Responses to Style Interrogatories, and naval archive records showing specific equipment from each Defendant on many of Mr. Stevens' Navy and PSNS ships.

Defendants also incorrectly suggest that their discovery responsibilities are limited to the ships that Plaintiffs know to contain their equipment. The purpose of discovery is to obtain potentially relevant information, not simply to confirm facts already known.

Plaintiffs request each and every asbestos-containing component manufactured, sold, or supplied by Defendants to all customers over a thirty year period. Their suggestion that this is a relevant and "modest" request is perplexing. Plaintiffs' legal authority is not on point. Roesburg v. Johns-Manville Corp., 85 F.R.D. 292 (D.C. Pa. 1980) does involve asbestos and discovery, but differs in the most important manner: factual allegations. Mr. Roesburg, as Plaintiffs note, alleged a conspiracy that predated his contact with the defendant's asbestos components; thus, discovery for documents prior to his time of employment was permitted. Plaintiffs here make no such allegation, yet they still request discovery beyond Mr. Stevens' alleged contact with Defendants' components during his years of Navy and PSNS work.

Plaintiffs fail to set forth more than conclusory reasoning for their broad request. Plaintiffs do not indicate how components wholly unrelated to the Navy or PSNS would be part of a potential "bare metal" defense. Nor do they indicate the type of relevant information that could possibly be discovered by this broad request. Mr. Stevens' alleged asbestos-contact occurred while working aboard Navy and PSNS ships between 1954 and 1984. Plaintiffs can still adequately address Defendants' "bare metal" defense without the overly broad and unduly burdensome request for every asbestos-component manufactured and sold for thirty years. Therefore, the motions to compel documents requested for components outside of those dates or to other entities are denied, as the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C). The motions to compel documents regarding Defendants' alleged asbestos-components and replacement parts manufactured, sold, or supplied to vessels Mr. Stevens worked on in the Navy or at PSNS between 1954 and 1984 are granted.[3]

III. CONCLUSION

The motions to compel for Interrogatories No. 1 and No. 2 are granted, but limited to asbestos containing components manufactured, sold, or supplied to the Navy and PSNS vessels Mr. Stevens claims he worked on between 1954 and 1984. The motions to compel for Interrogatories No. 3, No. 4, No. 5, No. 6, No. 7, and No. 8 are granted, but limited to the time period between 1954 and 1984.

The motion to compel for RFP No. 1 is granted, but limited to documents between 1954 and 1984.

The motion to compel for RFP No. 2 is granted, but limited in scope to documents furnished to the U.S. Navy or PSNS. The motion to compel for RFP No. 3 is granted.

The motions to compel for RFPs No. 4 and No. 5 are granted, but limited to contracts and agreements with the U.S. Navy or PSNS.

The motion to compel for RFP No. 6 is granted.

IT IS SO ORDERED

[1] The Court notes that Defendants IMO Industries, Inc. and Warren Pumps, LLC did not file responses to Plaintiffs' Motions to Compel. [2] The USS Eugene A. Greene, USS Yellowstone, USS Annapolis, USS Wright, USS Beatty, USS Kitty Hawk, USS Coral Sea, USS Belleau Wood, USS Sacramento, USS Camden, and the USS Berkeley. (Knudson Decl., Ex. 1, Dkt. #67 at 13.) [3] The supplemental documents submitted by Defendant Carrier briefly address two of the RFPs, but fail to provide substantive responses to other RFPs or any of Plaintiffs' interrogatories.

Sources

• The opinion on Google Scholar
• Washington asbestos laws
• Washington asbestos exposure sites