The Challenge of Addressing Environmental Stigma Claims

By on September 23, 2014
Leave a comment

The often uncertain nature of environmental stigma claims has resulted in diverse and often confusing jurisprudence. Stigma damage claims seek recovery of damages to the reputation of the realty.  Stigma damages represent the market’s perception of the decrease in property value caused by an injury to the property.

In the typical diminution of property value claim, the general rule is that a property owner may seek recovery of diminution of property value or the cost of remediation, but not both.  However, in certain circumstances, claimants contend, there is an “additional” diminution of value due to a public health concern about the subject property or contamination on adjacent property for which recovery is sought.  This is the subset of diminution of property value claims where claimants argue that damages should be awarded on account of stigma.

ETT BLOG_stigmaStigma claims raise conundrums for the courts.  On the one hand, courts desire to make a distressed plaintiff whole.  On the other hand, courts want to award only those damages that are proven with reasonable certainty.  Industry groups argue that stigma damages should not be permitted because they subject industry to the whim of any landowner able to obtain speculative testimony about the future economic impact of a temporary condition – even a condition that  a regulatory agency considers satisfactorily addressed.  These arguments take on even greater poignancy where the claimant’s property has not been physically impacted and the purported stigma is claimed to derive from mere proximity to a contaminated parcel.

On August 22, 2014, the Texas Supreme Court issued a thoughtful decision examining a number of these issues in Houston Unlimited, Inc.Metal Processing v. Mel Acres Ranch (No. 13-0084). The court performed a painstaking analysis of the opinions of the claimant’s diminution of property value expert, and rejected her methodology and conclusions across the board. As a result of finding the evidence supporting the property diminution claim insufficient, the court declined to take up the stigma issue.  Nevertheless, its discussion of stigma claim jurisprudence is noteworthy.

The Texas Supreme Court observed that American courts and commentators struggle with the issue of whether and when to allow recovery for stigma damages.  Most jurisdictions agree that plaintiffs must experience some physical injury to their property before they may recover stigma damages.  Although courts are divided on whether the injury must be shown to be permanent, defendants have expressed concern that a landowner should not be compensated when the loss is based primarily on public perceptions, which can change over time.

Equally problematic are cases in which the plaintiff’s property has not been contaminated or even threatened with contamination.  Some courts have awarded stigma damages to property owners who could demonstrate that their proximity to a landfill where hazardous wastes were dumped, for example, resulted in a loss of their home’s property value.  There is concern among commercial landowners that the possibility of property owners collecting damages in the absence of any direct physical impact to their homes could increase the number of claimants in mass tort property damage suits.

In reversing the Court of Appeals, the Texas Supreme Court observed that the struggle over whether to even allow recovery of stigma damages arises primarily from the conflicting goals of fully compensating the plaintiff for an injury while only awarding those damages that can be proven with a reasonable certainty.  The court observed that even when it is legally possible to recover stigma damages, it is often legally impossible to prove them.  This is because evidence based on conjecture, guess, or speculation is inadequate to prove stigma damages, not only as to the amount of the loss of value, but also as to the portion of the loss caused by the defendant’s conduct.

Based upon the rigor to which the high court subjected the claimant’s diminution of property value claims, Texas trial courts now are on notice that any diminution of property value, whether or not stigma is alleged, must be supported by strong evidentiary proof and reliable expert testimony.

Filed under Diminution of Property Value, Environmental Stigma, Texas Supreme Court

Texas Adopts Learned Intermediary Doctrine

By on June 29, 2012

The Texas Supreme Court rendered judgment in favor of Centocor, Inc., the pharmaceutical manufacturer subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, in a landmark decision involving the learned intermediary doctrine, Centocor, Inc. v. Patricia Hamilton, Thomas Hamilton and Michael G. Bullen, M.D. (No. 10-0223). The International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC), which often weighs in on signficant jurisprudential issues before appeals courts, filed an amicus brief requesting that the Court reject the direct-to-consumer advertising exception to the learned intermediary doctrine that had been recognized by the intermediate appellate court.  Porter Hedges LLP  filed the brief on IADC’s behalf.

The decision is significant because it the first time that the Texas Supreme Court has expressly recognized the learned intermediary doctrine. Texas now joins the vast majority of states that have adopted the learned intermediary rule. In a press release issued yesterday, IADC reported that the Court declined to create a direct-to-consumer advertising exception to the learned intermediary rule, despite the fact that two other states had done so. The Court also recognized that a plaintiff cannot plead around the learned intermediary rule by asserting causes of action such as fraud in what is, at its core, a failure to warn case. Significantly, the Court also recognized that the learned intermediary rule is not an affirmative defense, but a legal doctrine that is part and parcel of the plaintiff’s burden of proof. Further, the Court determined that where a prescribing physician is aware of a drug’s risks, "any inadequacy of the product’s warning, as a matter of law, is not the producing cause of the patient’s injuries."

In the opinion, the Court indicated that "Under the learned intermediary doctrine, the manufacturer of a pharmaceutical product satisfies its duty to warn the end user of its product’s potential risks by providing an adequate warning to a ‘learned intermediary,’ who then assumes the duty to pass on the necessary warnings to the end user." The Court held that "the doctrine generally applies within the context of a physician-patient relationship and allows a prescription drug manufacturer to fulfill its duty to warn end users of its product’s potential risks by providing an adequate warning to the prescribing physician."

Notably, the Texas Supreme Court was critical of the lower court’s opinion, which had attempted to carve out an exception to the learned intermediary doctrine for direct-to-consumer advertising. Although plaintiff Hamilton alleged various common law causes of action, all of her claims pivoted on the issue of whether the Centocor had provided an adequate warning to her physician in its prescribing information.  Therefore, the Court ruled,  the learned intermediary doctrine applied to all of Hamilton’s claims. It was incumbent upon plaintiff to demonstrate that an inadequate warning to her prescribing physician was responsible for her injury.  Because plaintiff failed to present any evidence that the purportedly  inadequate warning was at the root of the physician’s  decision to prescribe the medication, her claims failed as a matter of law."
 

Filed under Centocor, Inc, defense", durect-to-consumer advertising, IADC, intermediary, International Association of Defense Counsel, learned, learned intermediary doctrine, Pharmaceutical & Medical Device, Porter Hedges LLP, Remicade, Texas Supreme Court Tagged with ,