Wal-Mart Workers' CO Claim Runs Out of Gas

DanHolohan

(CN) - A group of Wal-Mart employees waited too long to sue over their

alleged exposure to carbon monoxide gas in the freezer section of

Wal-Mart's distribution center in Kentucky, the 6th Circuit ruled.

     The

Cincinnati appeals court agreed with a federal judge that the

plaintiffs -- current and former Wal-Mart employees and their spouses --

should have sued within a year of their last alleged exposure to the

gas.

     The plaintiffs blamed the exposure on two companies, Unarco

Material Handling and Atlas Material Handing, which allegedly operated

propane-powered welders inside the distribution center. Wal-Mart was not

a party to the lawsuit.

     Another group of employees had sued

within Kentucky's one-year statute of limitations and eventually settled

their claims with Unarco and Atlas.

     The distribution center

employees who sued later, dubbed the "new plaintiffs" by the 6th

Circuit, argued that the companies had been notified of their claims by

the original plaintiffs' timely lawsuit.

     Judge Richard Griffin

rejected this view as "myopic."

     He also tossed the plaintiffs'

"half-hearted argument" that their injuries from the carbon monoxide

exposure were latent, and thus weren't known right away.

     "[T]he

new plaintiffs concede that their injuries from carbon monoxide

exposure, like those of the timely plaintiffs, manifested immediately,"

Griffin wrote.

     The three-judge panel concluded that the lawsuit

was properly dismissed as time-barred.



<a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/03/05/25314.htm">http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/03/05/25314.htm</a>