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Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Courts - "Supreme Court Declines Case of Ala. Leukemia Victim's Widow"
From an AP story reported today at Law.com:
The widow of a leukemia victim failed to persuade the Supreme Court Monday to consider allowing her to sue oil companies over her husband's exposure to a toxic chemical, a case her lawyer calls a legal "Catch 22" in Alabama.The justices without comment declined to take up the case of Martha Jane Cline, who is trying to hold the companies accountable for her late husband's health problems. Jack Cline, of Vance, Ala., died in January.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that he waited too long to sue, even though Cline didn't know he was sick until after the deadline to sue had passed. Cline's attorney, Robert Palmer, who has filed many suits in other states over exposure to toxic chemicals, said all other states have a time limit that begins when a person learns of an illness.
Alabama courts have held there is a two-year window period to file a lawsuit from the last exposure to toxic chemicals, but they also have held there must be an injury before a lawsuit is filed. There was never a time when Cline, a longtime chemist who blamed exposure to benzene for his illness, could have filed suit because the two-year deadline passed in 1989 and he wasn't diagnosed with the disease until 1999. * * *
The case is Cline v. Ashland, Inc., 06-1329.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 5, 2007 10:03 AM
Posted to Courts in general