## Facts

- Between 1981 and 2011, Paul E. Stevens worked for Kentucky Power Company as a pole climber and later as a line-crew supervisor.
- Stevens’s work brought him into frequent contact with wooden utility poles, including occasions when he responded to and fought pole fires.
- From 1992 to 2003, Kentucky Power purchased wooden utility poles treated with the preservative chromated copper arsenate (CCA) from nine suppliers.
- Three of the pole suppliers were Koppers, Inc., Langdale Forest Products Company, and T.R. Miller Mill Company, Inc. (the wood-supplier defendants).
- Koppers and T.R. Miller purchased CCA preservative from Arch Wood Protection, Inc. (Arch).
- Langdale purchased CCA from Chemical Specialties, Inc. (CSI) and Osmose, Inc. (Osmose) at different times, and for certain periods bought almost exclusively from one or the other.
- In 2012, Stevens died from malignant melanoma. His estate, through its administrator, sued the wood suppliers and the CCA manufacturers/suppliers (Arch, CSI, and Osmose).
- The estate alleged that long-term occupational exposure to CCA from treated poles caused Stevens’s melanoma and that defendants failed to warn about health hazards associated with CCA exposure.
- Witnesses could not identify which specific poles Stevens worked on (or when), who supplied those poles, or which chemical company’s CCA was used to treat them.
- Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing the estate lacked evidence that Stevens was exposed to any defendant’s specific product; additional motions addressed medical causation, alleged superseding negligence by the employer, and challenges to expert testimony.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Kentucky products-liability/failure-to-warn law, the estate presented enough evidence for a reasonable jury to find that Stevens was exposed to a particular defendant’s CCA-treated poles or CCA preservative (product identification).
2. If product identification failed, whether the court needed to decide other disputes about medical causation, superseding cause, and the admissibility of expert opinions.

## Decision

- The court granted summary judgment for all defendants on the ground that the estate failed to produce evidence supporting a reasonable inference that Stevens was exposed to any defendant’s specific product.
- Proof that Kentucky Power bought CCA-treated poles from multiple suppliers during the relevant years, combined with general testimony that Stevens frequently worked on poles, did not show that Stevens encountered poles treated or supplied by any particular defendant.
- Because the lack of product identification defeated a required element of the estate’s claims, the court did not reach alternative defenses or evidentiary challenges.
- The court denied all remaining pending motions, including Daubert motions and other summary-judgment motions, as moot and entered judgment for defendants.

## Legal Principles

- In Kentucky product-liability and failure-to-warn cases, a plaintiff must present evidence that the injury was caused by a product made, supplied, or placed into the stream of commerce by the particular defendant sued.
- Evidence that a defendant participated in a market supplying similar products, without proof connecting the plaintiff’s exposure to that defendant’s product, is insufficient to create a triable issue.
- When the nonmoving party lacks evidence on an essential element such that no reasonable jury could find in its favor, summary judgment is proper under Rule 56.
- If a dispositive element (such as product identification) is not supported by sufficient evidence, the court may resolve the case on that basis and treat other causation and expert-testimony disputes as moot.

## Conclusion

The court entered summary judgment for the pole suppliers and CCA manufacturers because the estate could not connect Paul Stevens’s alleged CCA exposure to any defendant’s specific poles or preservative, and that failure of product identification ended the case without the need to decide medical causation or expert-testimony challenges.


Stevens v. Arch Wood Protection, Inc., Civil Action No. 12-46-HRW, 2006 WL 5660362 (2016)