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Hoskins .v Business Men's Assurance6/30/2003
th floor, he had to run wrought iron along the beams to support the machines and run all of the duct work and control circuits along the beams to the units. This, too, required him to physically remove the Sprayed Limpet from the beams.
Neither Mr. Hoskins nor the other operating engineers at the BMA Tower were told that the "Limpet" product to which they were regularly exposed, and sometimes covered in, contained asbestos until 1988 or 1989, after air quality tests in the building returned unacceptable readings of asbestos levels. Consequently, the operating engineers were required to take training classes, at which they learned the safety precautions for working in and around the Sprayed Limpet. These precautions included wearing protective equipment such as respirators and paper suits and hats that covered their entire bodies when working "up in the ceiling." They also had to build "a containment tent" around the area in which they worked, "so nothing would fall out of the ceiling and into the workspace." Prior to this training, Mr. Hoskins had never worn any sort of protective clothing or breathing apparatus and was regularly exposed to and breathed the Sprayed Limpet dust. Following the training, the operating engineers also began having annual company-provided medical exams that included pulmonary function tests and chest x-rays.
In January of 1999, Mr. Hoskins submitted to his routine medical exam. He was fifty-three at the time. After his pulmonary function and chest x-ray results raised the concerns of the testing facility about a possible disease process in his lungs, Mr. Hoskins' family doctor examined him and referred him for a CT scan. After receiving the results of the CT scan, his family doctor referred him to Dr. Hamner Hannah, a thoracic surgeon, who performed a lung biopsy on Mr. Hoskins at Menorah Hospital in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Dr. Hannah's post-operative report stated that "adhesions," or bands of scar tissue surrounded Mr. Hoskins' entire right lung. Dr. Hal Marshall, a surgical pathologist, diagnosed Mr. Hoskins as having desmoplastic malignant mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos. Mr. Hoskins was then referred to Dr. Mark Myron, a Kansas City oncologist, for treatment of the cancer.
In early April of 1999, Dr. Myron referred Mr. Hoskins to Dr. Valerie Rusch, a thoracic surgeon at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center ("Sloan-Kettering") in Manhattan, New York. After consultation and confirmation of Mr. Hoskins' desmoplastic mesothelioma diagnosis with a poor prognosis, Dr. Rusch determined that Mr. Hoskins was a candidate for aggressive lung removal surgery. Mr. Hoskins returned to New York City at the end of April for the surgical procedure. Dr. Rusch discovered during the surgery that Mr. Hoskins had "a very early stage tumor" that required only removal of the pleura, the lining of the lung, rather than removing the entire lung. Dr. Phillip Lieberman, a pathologist at Sloan-Kettering, reviewed the twenty tissue sample slides taken during Mr. Hoskins' biopsy at Menorah and likewise diagnosed desmoplastic mesothelioma. However, he did not find any evidence of mesothelioma in the tissue samples taken during the surgery performed by Dr. Rusch at Sloan-Kettering.
At Dr. Rusch's recommendation, Mr. Hoskins received post-operative radiation therapy at Research Medical Center in Kansas City. He continues to be monitored and treated by Dr. Myron. Dr. Myron testified in his videotaped deposition that Mr. Hoskins' "prognosis on the basis of the diagnosis of mesothelioma remained guarded. Most of these patients have recurrence of this disease. Most, if not all. And so obviously remained guarded about his
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