After concluding that Lisa Pransky contracted mesothelio-ma from her exposure to an asbestos-containing joint compound manufactured and distributed by petitioner, Georgia-Pacific Corporation, a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County awarded Ms. Pransky and her husband damages of $9,188,000. Of that sum, $4,800,000 was for Ms. Pransky’s non-economic damages. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgment entered upon that verdict.
We granted
certiorari
to consider whether (1) under the test laid down in
Eagle-Picher Indus. v. Balbos,
Substantial Factor Evidence
That Ms. Pransky had mesothelioma, from which she died at the age of 34 shortly after trial, is not in dispute. She attributed the disease to her exposure 25 years earlier to the asbestos-containing joint compound material, manufactured and distributed by petitioner, that her father used in the renovation of the basement of their home. Shortly after the family moved into the home in 1972, Lisa’s father, a heating and air conditioning contractor, converted the unfinished basement into a recreation room. With occasional help from a carpenter, he did the work himself, in the evenings and on weekends. It involved putting up studs along the walls and ceiling, nailing drywall to the studs, taping the seams, applying petitioner’s compound to the tape, and sanding the compound to get a smooth seam. He also
Lisa did not use the compound itself — she was only eight years old when the work was done. She was frequently in the basement while her father was working, however, either watching him or helping her mother with the laundry. Evidence was presented that the sanding created a lot of dust, that Lisa was exposed to that dust when she was in the basement, and that the dust was picked up by the ventilation system and spread throughout the house. Following completion of the work, Lisa played in the basement and was further exposed to dust occasionally emanating from the compound on the ceiling for about another 10 years, until she left the home to go to college.
These basic facts were not in substantial dispute. The issue was whether they sufficed to show that Lisa’s mesothelioma was caused by that exposure. Petitioner produced a great deal of medical evidence to the effect that Lisa’s mesothelioma was not asbestos-related at all and that, if it was, it emanated from the unusually high ambient levels of asbestos in her neighborhood, rather than from her limited exposure to petitioner’s joint compound. That evidence, if credited by the jury, would have been more than sufficient to justify a verdict in favor of petitioner. The jury apparently was not persuaded by that evidence, however, for it found otherwise. On appeal, we must view the evidence, and the inferences reasonably deducible from the evidence, in a light most favorable to the Pranskys, looking only to whether, viewed in that manner, it was legally sufficient to create a triable issue.
See Houston v. Safeway Stores, Inc.,
Because Lisa did not handle the joint compound herself, she is to be regarded as a “bystander.” We dealt with the issue of causation, with respect to a bystander, in
Balbos.
The plain
tiffs there, Balbos and Knuckles, both worked in a shipyard during World War II. Although they did not handle asbestos products directly, they each worked in the engine rooms of ships — large but confined areas — where they were exposed to “great quantities” of Eagle-Picher’s asbestos products.
Bal-bos, supra,
One of the plaintiffs, Knuckles, also asserted liability against another defendant, Porter-Hayden, based on evidence that it sold asbestos products that were used in other parts of the shipyard. Knuckles sought to connect his mesothelioma to the Porter-Hayden product under the “fiber drift theory,” which assumes that asbestos fibers may become airborne or re-entrained and thus be carried from their source to other areas, and that, as a result, anyone present in the facility where the product exists is entitled to have the jury determine causation with respect to that product.
Id.
at 216-17,
“Whether the exposure of any given bystander to any particular supplier’s product will be legally sufficient to permit a finding of substantial-factor causation is fact specific to each case. The finding involves the interrelationship between the use of a defendant’s product at the workplace and the activities of the plaintiff at the workplace. This requires an understanding of the physical characteristics of the work place and of the relationship between the activities of the direct users of the product and the bystander plaintiff. [citation omitted]. Within that context, the factors to be evaluated include the nature of the product, the frequency of its use, the proximity, in distance and in time, of a plaintiff to the use of a product, and the regularity of the exposure of that plaintiff to the use of that product, [citations omitted]. ‘In addition, trial courts must consider the evidence presented as to medical causation of the plaintiffs particular disease.’ Lockwood v. AC & S, Inc.,109 Wash.2d 235 ,744 P.2d 605 , 613 (1987).”
Id.
at 210-11,
The Pranskys, though insisting that the evidence they presented satisfies the
Balbos
test of frequent, proximate, and regular exposure, contend that the
Balbos
test has never been applied and should not apply in a non-occupational setting. They treat the
Balbos
test as one designed to test the reliability of
circumstantial
evidence of exposure, in the absence of
direct
evidence and contend that it has no relevance when exposure is established by
direct
evidence. We do not agree. The quoted statement from
Balbos
came in the context of our discussion of Balbos’s and Knuckles’s exposures to the EaglePicher product in the engine rooms, and the evidence of those exposures was direct, not circumstantial. We introduced that statement with the observation that “[n]either [plaintiff] in the cases before us worked directly with asbestos products; rather, they were bystanders,” and we then went on to articulate a test for determining causation with respect to bystanders.
Id.
at 210,
The jury in this case was instructed in full compliance with the Balbos standards. The court made clear that the burden was on the plaintiffs to show that exposure to petitioner’s product was a substantial causative factor in bringing about Lisa’s injuries and that, in determining that question, the jury was to consider “[t]he nature of the product, the frequency of its use, the proximity in distance and time of the plaintiff to the use of the product and the regularity of the exposure of that plaintiff to ... the use of a product.” The issue is only the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain liability under that standard; there is no indication that the jury was mis-in-structed on the law.
We have already recounted the fact that Lisa was present in the basement during the several-month period that her father was working on the project and was exposed to dust emanating from his sanding of the compound, and that she continued to be exposed to the compound spread on the ceiling during the next ten years that she lived in the home. Testimony was
This evidence, if credited by the jury, was clearly sufficient to establish that Lisa’s exposure to the dust emanating from petitioner’s asbestos-containing joint compound was a substantial factor in causing her mesothelioma and thus presented a triable issue for the jury to resolve.
Application of the Cap on Non-Economic Damages
The second question presented by petitioner is whether Ms. Pransky presented sufficient evidence to establish that her cause of action arose prior to July 1, 1986, the effective date of the statutory limitation on the amount of non-economic damages that can be awarded in a personal injury action.
See
Maryland Code, § 11 — 108(b)(1) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article. We just dealt with this issue in
John Crane, Inc. v. Scribner,
JUDGMENT OF COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS AFFIRMED, WITH COSTS.