7th Circuit Reverses Summary Judgment Award for Akzo Nobel Paints in Benzene Case

CHICAGO –– The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has reversed a summary judgment award for Akzo Nobel Paints LLC in a benzene case, finding that the district court erred when it threw out plaintiff expert testimony on grounds that the expert had relied on a “no threshold” level causation theory.

In the June 26 opinion, the 7th Circuit found that the expert’s testimony stating that “no threshold” level of benzene was safe was merely a digression into the state of the literature and that the expert had in fact used studies and calculations to determine that the …