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Clark v. ITT Grinnell Industrial Piping12/29/2000
Appeal by defendants ITT Grinnell Industrial Piping, Inc. and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company from opinion and award entered 23 September 1998 by the North Carolina Industrial Commission. Heard in the Court of Appeals 18 November 1999.
Pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. ยง 97-86 (Cum. Supp. 1998), defendant- employer ITT Grinnell Industrial Piping, Inc. (ITT Grinnell) and defendant-carrier Liberty Mutual Insurance Company (Liberty Mutual) appeal an opinion and award of the North Carolina Industrial Commission (the Commission) entered 23 September 1998. The Commission, in reversing the deputy commissioner's opinion and award entered 15 July 1997, awarded plaintiff-employee Jimmie Clark workers' compensation benefits for "Asbestos-related lung disease."
Plaintiff testified he worked as a pipe fitter for multiple employers for most of his life. He began working as a pipe fitter in 1952 at the age of eighteen in the shipyards of Newport News, Virginia, where he was exposed to asbestos products or dust during his employment.
Plaintiff changed jobs in June 1969, and for almost the next twenty-six years he was employed at an ITT Grinnell plant, formerly Carolina Industries Piping Company. ITT Grinnell fabricated pipes for use in nuclear power plants. Plaintiff began work in Bay One at ITT Grinnell as a pipe fitter for one week. He then worked in Bay Two for six months. Afterward, plaintiff trained in Bay Four for four months and then was transferred to Bay Three, where "heavy wall piping" was fabricated. Almost all of plaintiff's work, until the end of his employment in February 1985, occurred in Bay Three. Plaintiff testified that as a pipe fitter in Bay Three his primary duties were to cut holes and preheat piping joints with a torch before they were fitted by welders. Plaintiff occasionally performed welding operations after he pre-heated a pipe.
As a pipe fitter, plaintiff testified that he wore "burning gloves" or mittens made of asbestos to protect his hands from the heat. He continued to wear the asbestos gloves until they were replaced with non- asbestos gloves in late 1974.
Plaintiff testified that he worked in proximity to where stress relief operations were performed on the floor in Bay Three. To perform stress relief, an electric coil was wrapped around the necessary part of the pipe and fitting. The heating coil and the pipe were then wrapped with asbestos cloth and secured. The pipe and cloth remained in that position until a certain temperature was reached. Plaintiff also testified that he would lay the asbestos wrap over a pipe that had been pre-heated.
During plaintiff's first year in Bay Three, the ITT Grinnell plant completed a special, free-standing stress relief furnace that sat outside the bay area. It had a railroad car bottom, approximately ten- feet wide by forty-feet long with "fire bricks" on it. This railroad car bottom was rolled from the outside furnace to the inside of Bay Three, very close to plaintiff's work position. Plaintiff testified in his deposition that the railroad car carried soft, fibrous mortar and dust. After the stress relief furnace was constructed, the plant rarely used the stress relief on the floor in Bay Three.
The Commission heard testimony of Samuel Andrews (Andrews), who was employed by ITT Grinnell from 1969 to 1977. Andrews said that he wore asbestos gloves every day to handle hot pipes. He confirmed plaintiff's testimony that asbestos wrap was used on hot pipes in Bay Three. Furthermore, Andrews testified that he saw white residue of asbestos on the pipe after the pipe came out of the stress relieving furnace.
Adolphus Young (Young) testified he worked for ITT Grinne
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