3M Co. Cleared In Asbestos Case Involving Its Respirator

3M Co. Cleared In Asbestos Case Involving Its Respirator

Introduction

The Washington Superior Court for King County jury reached a defense verdict for 3M Co., in an in-person trial held at the reconfigured Bellevue Convention Center, which is now being used for civil trials, over a lawsuit that alleged the company's respirators for failing to protect a Puget Sound Naval Shipyard worker from asbestos exposure.

The court papers indicate that the plaintiff worked at the shipyard's insulation shop from 1972 to 1982, during which he used to clean asbestos materials that were discovered, broken, or spilled at the shipyard called asbestos 'spills.'

The plaintiff used an 8710 mask to protect him from the harm, which he alleged that the company knowingly misrepresented the effectiveness for use with asbestos. The plaintiff was diagnosed with his pleural mesothelioma in November 2019, after retiring from the shipyard in 1995.

According to the October 30 special verdict form, the Washington state jury said that "3M did not supply respirators that weren't reasonably safe as designed, and that wasn't reasonably safe because adequate warnings or instructions were not provided." The jury concluded that the company's 8710 respirator was reasonably safe as designed and contained adequate warnings or instructions.

The company and its subsidiary Aearo Technologies are facing nearly 150,000 earplugs lawsuits, each claiming that hearing loss injury was caused by its defective 3M earplugs that were standard issue by the military between 2003 and 2015.