Thousands have lost their homes and experienced health problems due to the toxic drywall.
Families along the Gulf Coast have fought since 2009 to receive some reimbursement for health and financial complications due to hazardous Made in China drywall — and now U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon will finally assess damages up to $1 billion to thousands of drywall victims.
The judge is scheduled to award damages today after six years of litigation between 4,000 class action lawsuit members and a team of lawyers hired by the Chinese company that's evaded the case.
As NPR explains, it can be particularly hard for U.S. courts to hold jurisdiction over a Chinese company, and the company in question, Taishan Gypsum, long evaded Judge Fallon:
"Fallon held Taishan [Gypsum] in contempt. He enjoined the company and its affiliates from doing any more business in the U.S., and he ordered them to forfeit 25 percent of their profits to an escrow account. Rather than risk their other business in the U.S., such as selling solar panels and buying Oregon lumber, the Chinese companies came back to federal court in March. In a surprising turnabout, lawyers for Taishan and its two parent companies agreed to pay seven Virginia families $2.7 million to fix their houses.”
Successfully holding a foreign company liable is no easy feat, according to Carl Tobias, a specialist in federal product liability lawsuits. “It's extraordinary that an American plaintiff is able to trace back to China and recover from a Chinese company some kind of reimbursement for product liability," Tobias said.
It's been a long road for those impacted by hazardous drywall. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a shortage of construction materials in the U.S. lead to an influx of Chinese drywall. In 2008, residents along the Gulf Coast began reporting health issues and structural problems in their new homes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found “premature failures of central air conditioning system evaporator coils and intermittent failure of appliances and/or electronic devices.” In addition, residents in those homes reported “a spectrum of symptoms and health effects including itch eyes and difficulty breathing.”
P.S. This isn’t the first time products from China have been hazardous. Just look at what happened to thousands of pets who consumed treats from China.