Court: Supreme Court of New York, New York County

In this asbestos action, plaintiff Peter Marino alleged he was exposed to asbestos from floor tiles manufactured by defendant, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Goodyear moved for summary judgment, arguing it could not have caused or contributed to plaintiff’s injury. Goodyear argued plaintiff “identified only potential exposure to Goodyear without surrounding details or confirmation.” Defendant further argued that plaintiff did not see the packaging of its floor tile, as well as its floor tiles would not have contained asbestos during the relevant time period. Plaintiff opposed Goodyear’s motion, citing plaintiff’s testimony identifying its floor tiles in his work from 1959 to the late 1980s.

With regard to the motion for summary judgment, the court first noted that “summary judgment is a drastic remedy and should only be granted if the moving party has sufficiently established that it is warranted as a matter of law.” Further, “summary judgment is rarely granted in negligence actions unless there is no conflict at all in the evidence.” Thereafter, the court explained that Dyer v. Amchem is the appropriate standard for summary judgment in New York. In Dyer, the defendants met their burden “by affirmatively prov[ing], as a matter of law, that there was no causation.”

Here, the court found that Goodyear did not meet its burden on summary judgment as plaintiff clearly identified moving defendant’s product even though he was over 90 years old and suffering from cancer when he was deposed. In addition, plaintiff submitted evidence regarding asbestos content of tiles manufactured by Goodyear. Notably, the court set forth the following:

[m]oving defendant’s arguments focus entirely on plaintiffs testimony and evidence as opposed to affirmatively establishing that their products could not have causally contributed to plaintiff’s lung cancer. Rather, moving defendant continues to reiterate that it was not manufacturing new tile varieties during the time period at issue herein which contained asbestos, but has proffered no evidence that its previously manufactured and potentially asbestos-containing varieties were not still in distribution or could not have been encountered by Mr. Marino. 

Thus, the court denied the motion.

Read the full decision here