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Torts Keyed to Epstein
Rainer v. Union Carbide Corporation
Facts
Union Carbide is a uranium-enrichment plant. Workers there were exposed without their knowledge to radioactivity over many years. Though they had no clinical symptoms as yet, they sued the successive operators/employers of the plant, on the ground that they had suffered invisible DNA and chromosomal damage due to prolonged radioactive exposure. The company records showed a lack of concern for worker safety as well as a lack of information or disclosure to the employees about the cancer-producing effects of their occupation. The district court dismissed the action as the state workers’ compensation act provided the exclusive legal remedy for such suits by workers against employers. The workers agreed to the normal exclusive nature of the act in providing for their legal remedy; however, they argued that the present claim fell under the exception to the act which had reference to an employer’s deliberate decision to cause injury or death to a worker. They based their argument on the ground that “deliberate intention”, as the act phrased it, referred also to actions undertaken with the moral certainty that a specific result was to be expected or highly probable. The court of appeals granted review of the case.
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