Two previous verdicts have awarded the family of the deceased Timothy Bostic $9.3 million and $13.6 million in separate trials, but Georgia-Pacific's successful motion for retrial and recusal means the Bostics will have to try their case yet again, this time in County Court At Law No. 1, under newly elected Democrat Judge D'Metria Benson.
"We are pleased that a new judge will now be handling the case," Georgia-Pacific chief counsel John Childs is quoted in a company press release. Neither the Bostic family nor their attorneys could be reached for comment.
Timothy Bostic died from mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer his family alleges he contracted as a result of working construction jobs with his father as a child in the '70s. In 2005, the first verdict was overturned because of a procedural error. The second verdict, reached in June 2006, was thrown out and ordered retried after Montgomery was ruled to have acted improperly when a key witness collapsed at the courthouse and later died.
After testifying in the second trial in May 2006, the elderly Harold Bostic, father of the deceased, collapsed in the court hallway in view of the jury. One juror, an EMT, rendered aid and Montgomery, who said she had medical experience, also helped Bostic. Counsel for Georgia-Pacific immediately moved for a mistrial but were denied. Bostic later died, and when the plaintiffs' attorney showed up wearing black for the trial, jurors wanted to know what had happened. But Montgomery did not immediately advise Georgia-Pacific's counsel of the jury's inquiries, and she is currently involved in a separate wrongful-termination lawsuit with her former court reporter, Cayce Coskey, who alleges she was fired after she told the Georgia-Pacific lawyers about the jury's concerns. The December mistrial motion was granted by Judge Russell H. Roden, but a new trial date has not yet been set.
Montgomery, named the second-worst judge in Texas by the Texas Observer, was re-elected in November in the Democratic sweep of Dallas County.
