WASHINGTON–Successor liability for damages has been rejected by a Texas appellate court in cases where a company acquires a business where an asbestos victim worked.

The appellate court panel, based in Houston, upheld in a 2-1 split decision the constitutionality of retroactive state legislation that barred victims of asbestos-related disease from winning damages–either compensatory or punitive–from the successor companies.

According to Mark Behrens, a lawyer with Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. in Washington, D.C., the decision in Robinson vs. Crown Cork provides “relief from unfair asbestos-related successor liability.”

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