Catrett v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp.

The Supreme Court majority opinion remanded the Celotex litigation to the D.C. Circuit.  Small pieces of the opinions from the D.C. Circuit's resulting opinion appear below. The panel found that, assuming that the movant (Celotex) had discharged its burden to produce an argument that there was an absence of evidence that the decedent had been exposed to Celotex's asbestos products, the non-moving party (plaintiff) had produced enough evidence of exposure to demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact, and so ruled against summary judgment. The majority reviewed the three documents upon which the plaintiff (Catrett) had based her case: a transcript of testimony in a worker's compensation claim detailing exposure, a letter from the the corporation to an insurance agent detailing the worker's employment, and a letter from the insurance agent (named Hoff) to the plaintiff's counsel. The panel majority agreed with Catrett that, if it ended up being admissible, this evidence could allow a rational jury to infer exposure to Celotex asbestos (specifically, a product called Firebar). Celotex had argued that the documents were inadmissible hearsay, and thus should not have been considered in the Rule 56 motion. The panel majority thought the issue of admissibility was unclear and would thus have to be resolved at trial.  In addition, the panel majority suggested that Celotex had failed to raise the issue of the admissibility of the documents in the trial court, and thus should not be heard to argue that point on appeal.