Dinsmore's Toxic Tort Practice Group offers clients comprehensive services litigating complex toxic tort, chemical exposure, and workplace exposure cases. We are experienced in litigating a wide variety of toxic tort cases in state and federal courts nationwide, including litigation involving flavoring chemicals, tobacco, asbestos and mold. We are not only experienced in toxic tort law and litigation strategy, but also possess a wide range of skills, including formal training in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and engineering.
Through our extensive experience handling toxic tort and exposure cases, we have developed sophisticated case management procedures to efficiently and effectively coordinate the handling of numerous concurrent complex cases. Dinsmore has developed the technological applications necessary to assist clients in responding to discovery requests and collecting, organizing, storing and analyzing vast amounts of litigation and claims information in a secure web-based environment.
Dinsmore's toxic tort capabilities are also supplemented by our comprehensive environmental law capabilities. The breadth and depth of our attorneys experience in these areas enables us to advise and defend our clients with a thorough understanding of how best to minimize potential toxic substance liabilities throughout our clients' operations.
Dinsmore has represented clients in a wide variety of toxic tort matters, including:
Flavoring Chemicals / Diacetyl
Our attorneys currently represent a major flavorings manufacturer as national counsel handling multiple workplace and consumer butter flavoring lawsuits involving claims of exposure-related respiratory injuries and diseases, such as bronchiolitis obliterans. These cases involve hundreds of plaintiffs in state and federal courts in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Washington. Our trial attorneys have taken eight cases to trial since 2003.
Asbestos
Our attorneys have extensive experience handling personal injury premises liability and products liability asbestos cases for building owners and product manufacturers. Our cases involve such products as grinding wheels, pumps, valves, furnaces, joint compounds and locomotive brakes. We currently represent clients in over 10,000 pending asbestos cases, primarily in Northern Ohio (Cuyahoga County). We have also defended manufacturers of asbestos-containing talc products against claims that exposure to the talc products caused respiratory injuries.
Mold
We have extensive experience in mold-related tort and property claims involving builders, contractors, property owners, hotels, condo associations, landlords, developers and product manufacturers. Our attorneys have handled dozens of such cases, successfully eliminating the vast majority prior to trial. Our attorneys have relationships with numerous expert witnesses to assist in case preparation and trial and also have experience deposing the leading plaintiff mold experts.
Tobacco
Our attorneys have represented major tobacco product manufacturers in extensive, nationwide smoking and health litigation relating to claims of product-related disease and allegations regarding the sufficiency of warnings provided for tobacco products. Our attorneys handled dozens of such cases, including five taken to trial. We obtained favorable results for our client in each trial, including a jury verdict in a major medical monitoring class action in West Virginia. We continue to represent a major cigarette manufacturer in the defense of over a thousand personal injury claims pending against it for tobacco related diseases.
Toxic Shock
We represent a major manufacturer of tampons in defending against allegations involving toxic shock syndrome and the sufficiency of warnings provided on product packaging.
Pesticides
Our attorneys defended a manufacturer of pesticides against toxic exposure claims made by homeowners following the application of the manufacturer's products at their home.
Benzene
Our attorneys defended negligence and product liability claims against a manufacturing defendant alleging cancer causation resulting from decades of benzene-containing product exposures at a large steel corporation's facility. We have also represented manufacturers of benzene-containing products against claims of injuries resulting from product related benzene exposure.
Lead Paint
We have successfully represented a pigment manufacturer against public nuisance claims made by various cities and the state of Ohio seeking billions of dollars in compensation for statewide remediation costs due to lead paint. Recently, the State of Ohio voluntarily dismissed the last of such cases pending against our client.
Chemical Spills
Our attorneys have litigated personal and property injury claims resulting from petroleum truck spills, underground storage tank leaks and chemical releases from railroad tank cars. Our attorneys also defended a construction company in a dispute involving the adequacy of the containment systems in place at the site of an estimated 100,000 gallon gasoline spill.
Polyacrylamide
We have defended chemical companies against claims of neurological impairment and other illnesses made by workers as a result of alleged exposure to polyacrylamide used in flocculant at waste water treatment facilities.