In vacating a lower court certification of a class action, the West Virginia Supreme Court has tightened standards for medical monitoring in cases of exposure to high-risk chemicals.
The court decision is a step toward returning the class action mechanism to its intended function, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, which filed an amicus curiae in the case. "We applaud the decision of the West Virginia Supreme Court in Chemtall, Inc. v. Madden," said Robert Hurns, counsel and legislative database manager for PCI. "The high court, in effect, has determined that trial lawyers cannot impose West Virginia's medical monitoring standards upon other states that have not adopted them."
The case involves coal workers who claim to have been exposed to acrylamide while working in plants in West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. The workers filed a class action lawsuit against various manufacturers, with the class including the workers' offspring, who, they argued, are at increased risk of developing genetic abnormalities and diseases.
On Sept. 26, 2003, the circuit court certified the class. The defendants and other petitioners took their challenge of the class certification to the West Virginia Supreme Court the following April, and the court accepted the issue.
In many cases, individuals who have been exposed to substances such as asbestos, but who are not currently ill, are monitored, should the illness manifest at a later date. West Virginia has the nation's most liberal law pertaining to medical monitoring, PCI noted, adding that insurers, traditionally, have been required to pay the costs of medical monitoring.
PCI expressed concern that a liberal standard would be exported to other states by means of the class action mechanism. PCI, along with the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Chemistry Council, the Coalition for Litigation Justice, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed a brief arguing that class certification should be reversed, as the lawsuit included claimants from other states that did not recognize medical monitoring as a cause of action.
The high court agreed, stating that West Virginia law requires that claims must be "based on the same legal theory." The court also chided the trial court, saying that it had "committed clear error in failing to consider West Virginia's conflict of law doctrine and in failing to conduct a meaningful analysis of variations in the law of the several states included in the proposed class action."
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