Justia Virginia Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Orvin Kiser died in 2009 from employment-related exposure to asbestos and his resulting mesothelioma, which was he was diagnosed with in late 2008. In 1988, Kiser was diagnosed with nonmalignant pleural thickening and asbestosis. In 2010, Kiser's wife, Phyllis Kiser, filed a wrongful death action against twenty-one defendants. A U.S. district court dismissed the action as barred by the relevant two-year statute of limitations, holding that Virginia law adheres to the indivisible cause of action theory and limitations begins to run on asbestos-related claims on the initial date of diagnosis by a physician of any asbestos-related disease. On appeal, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals certified a question of law to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Court answered that under Va. Code 8.01-249(4), a plaintiff's cause of action for damages due to latent mesothelioma is deemed to accrue not at the time of the mesothelioma diagnosis but, rather, decades earlier, when the plaintiff was diagnosed with an independent, non-malignant asbestos-related disease. View "Kiser v. A.W. Chesterton Co." on Justia Law