Illinois Supreme Court Clarifies Legal Standard in Asbestos Civil Conspiracy Litigation

The Illinois Supreme Court’s recent ruling in John Jones v. Pneumo Abex LLC et al.¹ clarified that there is no practical difference between the standard at summary judgment and that directing a verdict. Plaintiffs John and Deborah Jones filed suit against numerous companies to recover damages they suffered after Mr. Jones developed lung cancer from purported exposure to asbestos. Plaintiffs also advanced a civil conspiracy claim against Owens-Illinois, Inc. (“Owens-Illinois”), Pneumo Abex LLC (“Pneumo Abex”), and other companies, alleging that they: (1) knew that asbestos was hazardous; and (2) conspired to misrepresent its dangers by falsely asserting that exposure to asbestos was safe.

Owens-Illinois and Pneumo Abex separately moved for summary judgment. Both companies argued that the Supreme Court had already decided this exact issue decades ago as to Owens-Illinois in McClure v. Owens Corning Fiberglas Corp.,² and that the fourth district had reached the same conclusion more recently in Rodarmel v. Pneumo Abex, L.L.C.,³ Menssen v. Pneumo Abex Corp.,⁴ and Gillenwater v. Honeywell International, Inc.⁵ The circuit court agreed and allowed both motions; it reasoned that the parties had acknowledged that the evidence was the same as in Rodarmel for Pneumo Abex and Gillenwater for Owens-Illinois, even though both cases involved motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The circuit court assessed minor factual differences between the summary judgment records and past cases involving the same allegations against the same companies and held that summary judgment was proper because the evidence overwhelmingly favored Owens-Illinois and Pneumo Abex.

The appellate court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. It held that summary judgment was improper because “there are no definitive answers to the disputed questions of fact presented by plaintiffs.”⁶ The appellate court reasoned that prior civil conspiracy cases with the same underlying facts—McClure, Rodarmel, Menssen, Gillenwater—were distinguishable because they were decided on motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, not motions for summary judgment.

The supreme court disagreed, found that the appellate court committed reversible error, and remanded for further proceedings. It noted that, since McClure, courts have frequently reviewed the same record and have entered judgment as a matter of law in the companies’ favor after the cases proceeded to trial and resulted in verdicts for plaintiffs—the companies cannot be held liable for civil conspiracy. The supreme court reasoned that courts must review the evidence as a whole, and not focus on subtle aspects of the comprehensive record. And this review requires application of the same clear and convincing standard to civil conspiracy claims at the summary judgment stage as the judgment notwithstanding the verdict stage when plaintiffs are attempting to prove their case through circumstantial evidence. The identical standard applies in either instance: Whether all the evidence, when viewed in the light most favorable to the opponent, so overwhelmingly favors the movant that no contrary verdict could stand. The Jones decision cements that rationale.

As the supreme court noted, these asbestos civil conspiracy cases “[do] not present the typical summary judgment scenario, where the issues in dispute have yet to face the scrutiny of a trier of fact and the objective is to determine whether a genuine issue of material fact exists.”⁷ To the contrary, the underlying facts of the purported civil conspiracy in Jones are decades-old, well documented, and have been “thoroughly explored” and “aggressively tested.”⁸ “In such cases, there is no practical difference between the standard for summary judgment and that governing directed verdicts.”⁹ “If all relevant evidence is already before the court and upon such evidence there would be nothing left to go to a jury so that the court would be required to direct a verdict, denying summary judgment to permit further proceedings to take place would serve no purpose.”¹⁰

That there were minor factual variations in the summary judgment record is a distinction without a difference. “Even if some issue of fact is presented by the summary judgment motion, if what is contained in the pleadings and affidavits would have constituted all of the evidence before the court and upon such evidence there would be nothing left to go to a jury, and the court would be required to direct a verdict, then a summary judgment should be entered.”¹¹

The Jones ruling reaffirms and extends the pragmatic approach to deciding conspiracy cases articulated in McClure decades ago. If a defendant can prevail on a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (assuming a jury rules in the plaintiff’s favor), it can prevail on summary judgment; there is no triable issue. To hold otherwise would be, as the Illinois Supreme Court said, “nonsensical.”¹²