The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has decided in a recent asbestos case that mere exposure to asbestos is not sufficient to prove a link to asbestos related cancer. Instead, the Court said Plaintiffs would have to establishment a relationship between the exposure and the development of the disease.
“Simply put,” the court said in its 53-page opinion, “one cannot simultaneously maintain that a single fiber among millions is substantially causative, while also conceding that a disease is dose-responsive.”
Essentially, the Plaintiff’s counsel in this case relied upon a popular asbestos theory of ‘any breath or fiber’ theory meaning that exposure to just one asbestos fiber was sufficient to show exposure that could lead to cancer. Pennsylvania now joins Texas as states that have rejected that theory.