## Facts

- Graham Yates and Becky Yates sued Ford Motor Company and Honeywell International, Inc. (as successor to Bendix) alleging Graham Yates developed pleural mesothelioma from asbestos exposure associated with automotive brake products.
- The remaining claims for trial included negligence for placing asbestos-containing products in the market and failure to warn.
- Defendants filed pretrial motions under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert to exclude or limit plaintiffs’ causation experts, including pathologist Eugene Mark, M.D., and cell/animal pathologist Arnold Brody, Ph.D.
- Honeywell also sought to preclude evidence that brake dust causes pleural mesothelioma and to bar “every exposure counts” (or “each and every exposure”) causation testimony.
- The court conducted a multi-day Daubert hearing where Dr. Mark testified for plaintiffs and Dr. David Garabrant testified for Honeywell.
- The order addressed admissibility and permissible scope of general-causation and specific-causation opinions in an asbestos brake-dust case.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs’ expert opinions on general causation (asbestos-containing brake dust is capable of causing pleural mesothelioma) and specific causation (plaintiff’s exposures were causative) were admissible under Rule 702 and Daubert.
2. Whether experts could testify that “each and every exposure” to asbestos above background is a substantial contributing cause of mesothelioma.
3. Whether the experts’ reliance on epidemiological, toxicological, mechanistic, and other scientific evidence reflected reliable methods applied to the plaintiff’s exposure history.

## Decision

- The court granted the motions in part and denied them in part.
- The court permitted plaintiffs’ experts to offer general-causation testimony that asbestos exposure associated with brake work can cause pleural mesothelioma.
- The court permitted specific-causation testimony linking Yates’s brake-related asbestos exposures to his mesothelioma, based on a case-specific exposure history and relevant scientific literature, without requiring precise dose reconstruction.
- The court barred testimony framed as a categorical “every exposure counts” theory to the extent it treated any above-background exposure, without assessing exposure characteristics, as independently a substantial contributing factor.
- The court allowed cumulative-exposure testimony that tied causation to the overall character and magnitude of Yates’s exposures rather than the mere existence of any exposure.

## Legal Principles

- Under Fed. R. Evid. 702, expert testimony must be based on sufficient facts or data, be the product of reliable principles and methods, and reflect reliable application of those methods to the case facts.
- Daubert requires the trial court to act as gatekeeper for reliability and relevance; the court does not decide which side’s science is correct where both rest on recognized methods.
- Scientific disagreement and competing interpretations of studies generally go to weight and cross-examination, not automatic exclusion, if the expert explains how evidence was evaluated.
- In asbestos causation, Rule 702 does not invariably require precise quantitative dose reconstruction; a reliable qualitative or semi-quantitative exposure assessment may suffice when grounded in a developed exposure history.
- An unqualified “each and every exposure” opinion, untethered to exposure intensity, duration, frequency, or other dose-related considerations, may be excluded as an unreliable methodology under Rule 702.
- Cumulative-exposure reasoning is admissible when the expert connects causation to the plaintiff’s overall exposure picture and explains why those exposures materially contributed to risk and disease.

## Conclusion

The court allowed plaintiffs’ experts to present general and specific causation opinions relating asbestos-containing brake work to pleural mesothelioma, but limited the testimony to prevent a bare “each and every exposure” theory that treated any above-background exposure as automatically a substantial contributing cause without a reasoned exposure-based analysis.


Yates v. Ford Motor Co., No. 5:12-CV-752-FL, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 64309 (E.D.N.C. 2015)