It is extremely rare for a civil case filed in New York State to be reviewed by its highest court—the New York Court of Appeals. In 2023, 1,030,781 civil cases were filed in New York State trial courts; however, only 93 appeals were decided by the Court of Appeals.1 This represents just 0.009% of civil cases filed that year. Due to a recent decision from the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department (“Fourth Department”), the Court of Appeals may soon address a question of law regarding the state’s causation standard in asbestos cases.2
On July 25, 2025, the Fourth Department decided an appeal from a judgment awarding damages to plaintiff Joseph A. Skrzynski for injuries allegedly sustained from exposure to asbestos while employed at a car dealership’s parts department.
3 At trial, a New York jury returned a verdict against the sole remaining defendant, finding that Mr. Skrzynski’s exposure to chrysotile asbestos from the defendant’s manufactured brake products was a substantial contributing factor in causing his peritoneal mesothelioma disease.
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The defendant appealed the verdict, contending that causation was not established by the evidence presented at trial. The Fourth Department declined to overturn the verdict for lack of causation, holding that “the jury’s verdict satisfies the minimal not utterly irrational appellate review test.”5 The majority’s opinion highlighted plaintiff’s experts’ testimony, relying on a quote from Parker, a prior Court of Appeals decision on the causation standard in toxic tort cases in New York, that “[I]t is not always necessary for a plaintiff to quantify exposure levels precisely or use the dose-response relationship provided that whatever methods an expert uses to establish causation are generally accepted in the scientific community.”6
However, Justice Stephen Lindley of the Fourth Department dissented, arguing that the jury’s verdict should be reversed as the plaintiff failed to establish both general and specific causation through expert testimony.7 Notably, as to specific causation, Justice Lindley discussed plaintiff’s reliance on exposure estimates for career brake mechanics, which are not reasonably comparable to the exposures Mr. Skrzynski may have encountered as a parts clerk and deliveryman who was not employed as a brake mechanic.8 Justice Lindley found that such reliance cannot qualify as a “scientific method” used to establish specific causation against the remaining defendant.9
Because of Justice Lindley’s dissent, the defendant has a clear path to appeal the Fourth Department’s decision to New York’s Court of Appeals. The New York Constitution permits appeals as of right under very limited circumstances, including: “when, from a judgment or order entered upon the decision of an appellate division of the supreme court which finally determines an action or special proceeding wherein…one or more of the justices of the appellate division dissents from the decision of the court…”10 This situation therefore presents a unique opportunity for the Court of Appeals to further review and refine New York’s causation standard in asbestos cases involving exposure scenarios that are not reasonably comparable to exposure estimates found in scientific literature. We note that the Court of Appeals previously addressed this issue in Juni, which first acknowledged and enforced the State’s causation standards in an asbestos matter.11
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