A bid by survivors of alumina workers who sued over silica dust exposure they said made them sick got a second chance to succeed by the Virgin Islands Supreme Court. In a recent opinion, justices of the high court dismissed a lower court decision reached in 2020 that denied petitions by survivors of former workers who sued but have died since then.
Chief Supreme Court Justice Rhys Hodge wrote the opinion published on March 30. Hodge, along with Associate Supreme Court Justices Maria Cabret and Ive Swan, heard oral arguments made on an appeal of a Superior Court decision from August 2020.
Hodge said when reaching that decision, the lower court cited part of the Virgin Islands Rules of Civil Procedure in error. Justices sent the case back to the judge in the case with orders to look at other portions of the procedural rules and, if needed, hold a hearing to help them clarify the matter.
More than 120 former St. Croix Alumina filed suit against their employer as of 2013, claiming that while on the job, they were exposed to bauxite dust, silica dust, and asbestos. The plant that produced bauxite, used to manufacture aluminum, closed in 2001. Since then three of the plaintiffs — Arnim Metivier, Samuel Prime, and John A. Weekes — died between 2010 and 2016.
Relatives of the three deceased plaintiffs went to court to ask that they be allowed to substitute themselves as plaintiffs. By the time the case was heard in St. Croix Superior Court, the controlling corporation was Lockheed Martin.
Lawyers for Lockheed Martin said the time allowed for the survivors to make that request had expired; the court agreed in its August 2020 ruling. But the high court justices said the procedural rule cited did not include a mandate to disqualify the petitioners.
Hodge said survivors of Metivier, Prime, and Weekes did not dispute whether they made timely requests. But they pointed out the instances where time limits were set for consideration of certain cases, and petitions to serve as substitute plaintiffs were not among them.
The chief justice also credited the lower court, which noted that the timely filing limitation cited in the case acted like a statute of limitations but was not one. He added that the silica dust lawsuit has survived the deaths of some plaintiffs, and for that reason, the petitions for substitute plaintiffs deserved reconsideration.
