Page 175 - Cityview_July_Aug_2015

laminate flooring that the company also makes in addition
to hardwood is manufactured in China, where laminates are allowed to exceed American formaldehyde standards. The result: Tens of thousands of American homes have excessive levels of a known carcinogen in their flooring. In turn and according to tests, those floors are emitting formaldehyde gases at six, seven, and in some cases 20 times the California state formaldehyde emission standards.
According to the Sixty Minutes expert in environmental pediatrics Dr. Philip Landrigran of New York’s Mount
Sinai Hospital, “Long-term exposure at that level would... increase the risk for chronic respiratory irritation, change a person’s lung function, increase risk of asthma. It’s not going to produce symptoms in everyone, but children will be the people most likely to show symptoms.”
This civil action has not yet been adjudicated, but Coleman, who represents clients in California, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and Indiana, says that the US Department
of Justice is also seeking criminal charges in the case.
Two other settlements of which Coleman is particularly
proud were not class actions per se, but he says they were still significant legally in how they extended company liability:
Sally Jenkins v. Star Transportation
The plaintiff was a 38-year-old woman struck while on her motorcycle because a truck driver for Star Transportation had waved another motorist into her lane. Coleman had to establish not only the identity of the driver (who denied being at the scene) but more importantly the liability of the trucking company for its driver’s action, even though he was not directly involved in the ensuing impact. The jury awarded a judgment of $2.5 million and was the largest auto-negligence verdict in Tennessee in 2009.
Alcoa Asbestos
As a newborn, Amanda Satterfield was exposed to asbestos because her father worked at the Alcoa aluminum plant and brought home mesothelioma-causing asbestos fibers on his work clothes. Because of her exposure as an infant, Satterfield later developed this form of lung cancer and died when
only 25 years old. In a case he took all the way to the State Supreme Court, Coleman established that Alcoa already knew