Morrison Mahoney partner Ted Murphy recently obtained three wins for our client, the prime designer and builder of the nation’s submarine fleet.
The first case was brought under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Act. The plaintiff alleged that his kidney cancer was caused by his workplace exposure to solvents previously used in our client’s shipyard during his 40-year career as a machinist and, later, nuclear inspector. Each party called two well-credentialed medical experts concerning the cause of his cancer. With good cross-examination, Ted was able to impeach the testimony of plaintiff’s experts, causing the federal administrative law judge hearing the case to discredit their testimony and adopt the opinions of our client’s experts who implicated plaintiff’s cigarette smoking and a genetic susceptibility as the causes of his cancer.
The second win was a victory at the Benefits Review Board in Washington, D.C. The Board affirmed the trial judge’s decision in favor of our client in a complex spinal injury case also brought under the Longshore Act.
In the third matter, Ted prevailed before an administrative law judge at the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals in Arlington, Virginia. The case involved our client’s appeal of a seizure order from the United States Treasury against our client to recover conditional payments made by Medicare to the physicians and hospitals treating our client’s former employee who had been exposed to asbestos during the initial years of his employment (i.e., 1960’s and 70’s). Ted was able to prove that the thousands of dollars in medical payments made by the government were unrelated to the employee’s compensable asbestos-related pleural injury. This was Ted’s first case before that particular federal agency, and he will likely appear before them again given Medicare’s increased efforts to recover conditional payments (and punitive damages) against employers, insurers, and third-party administrators.
