Jared Hausmann

Asbestos Proof Preserved through Appeal

Jared Hausmann handles motions, defendant discovery, post-trial practice, and appeals in mesothelioma and asbestos litigation.

Seen and New York Causation Law

Munir Seen worked around dry joint compound in New York and New Jersey construction. Hausmann helped defend the estate’s trial record on appeal against Kaiser Gypsum, connecting product testimony with formula records, historical industrial-hygiene studies, and medical evidence concerning cumulative asbestos exposure.

Because Kaiser entered the case after Seen’s videotaped trial-preservation deposition, it challenged the recording’s use at trial. Kaiser later took its own deposition of Seen and had a full opportunity to question him about the earlier testimony. The trial court admitted the recording, and the First Department upheld that ruling.

Under Nemeth v. Brenntag North America, toxic-tort proof must express exposure through a reliable scientific method and connect it to a level capable of causing the disease. Seen identified the Kaiser bags, the frequency and duration of his work, and the mixing and sanding tasks that produced dust. Formula records connected Kaiser’s products to asbestos-containing ingredients. The estate’s experts matched those facts to historical studies measuring airborne concentrations during the same tasks, calculated Seen’s total exposure, and compared it with evidence involving drywall workers.

The historical measurements did more than show that joint-compound work created dust. They converted the tasks Seen described into an exposure range a court could inspect: product, task, frequency, measured concentration, cumulative exposure, medical mechanism, and mesothelioma. That chain let the reviewing court test the method without requiring new measurements from the construction sites where Seen had worked decades earlier.

On May 21, 2024, the First Department unanimously held that Seen’s testimony and Kaiser’s records sufficiently identified the product, the expert method supplied a quantitative basis for causation, and the expert disclosure gave adequate notice of the asbestos-contaminated-talc evidence. The court approved a $10 million measure for pre-death pain and suffering and left the product-identification, causation, and liability findings intact.

Rugg and Workplace Asbestos Exposure

Daniel Rugg spent approximately thirty years in maintenance and electrical roles at a Pennsylvania plastics plant. His work included lifting fifty-pound bags of industrial talc and emptying them into storage hoppers. Trial evidence showed that the talc contained asbestos, testing information had reached Washington Penn Plastics decades earlier, and Rugg received neither a warning nor respiratory protection.

After a three-week trial, the jury found that Washington Penn failed to provide a reasonably safe workplace. It awarded $1.4 million to the estate, $1.65 million in wrongful-death damages, and $750,000 for Sandra Rugg’s loss of consortium, for a total of $3.8 million.

Hausmann helped present the plaintiffs’ case at trial before leading the post-verdict defense of the result.

Hausmann briefed and argued the opposition to Washington Penn’s post-verdict motion, which raised statutory-interpretation and workers’ compensation issues. The trial court denied the motion. Washington Penn appealed, then withdrew and discontinued the appeal on January 18, 2023. The trial court approved the resolution on February 1, and the litigation concluded in a $3 million settlement.

Appellate Practice and Background

Hausmann has written amicus briefs for the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association addressing civil-conspiracy doctrine in asbestos litigation and claimants’ ability to present a complete evidentiary record.

For the amicus assignment, he organized competing precedents, public-policy considerations, and the practical consequences for asbestos claimants, presenting the doctrine beyond the facts of a single record.

Before entering private practice, he spent two years in the Staff Attorney’s Office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, reviewing district-court records, researching federal questions, and drafting proposed opinions.

That work trained attention on what remains after the courtroom record closes: notice, objections, deposition designations, expert methodology, statutory preservation, verdict forms, post-trial rulings, and the standard of review.

He graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Illinois University and magna cum laude from Saint Louis University School of Law, where he served as an articles editor and competed in the National Moot Court Competition.

Hausmann joined Simmons Hanly Conroy in 2016, became a shareholder in 2023, and is now a partner in the Alton office.