Your right to be safe from the hazardous materials an employee might unknowingly leave work with were established with diligence and at a cost.
One family’s loss and their attorney’s perseverance led to the Supreme Court ruling that established an employer’s “duty of care.” On 9/9/08 Greg Coleman’s efforts resulted in a precedent that we all now have to live with. Will it stand the test of time?

Few things can affect a parent like the thought of having to bury their child. Imagine it is your child and that their death was caused by something you did. Even if those actions were taken with the best of intentions, such an outcome could render the most stoic adult, completely inconsolable. On January 1, 2005, Amanda Nicole Satterfield, the oldest child of Doug and Donna Satterfield, died from issues related to mesothelioma.  Caused exclusively by asbestos exposure, the source of that exposure is the contentious issue discussed in the interview below. For 33 years, beginning in 1973, Doug Satterfield was employed by Alcoa. It was considered to be a “catch” of a job in that the pay and benefits were above average for the area. Unfortunately for the Satterfields, the amount of asbestos was also above average.

In 1972, OSHA promulgated regulations prohibiting employees who had been exposed to asbestos from taking their clothes home to be laundered. The apparent decision by Alcoa to ignore that regulation brought tragedy and untold pain to this family.  For Doug, it was the dual horrors of having to bury his child and, finding out that he was the vehicle that delivered the instrument of her death. Amanda was born 3 months premature. Her initial existence was as much of a struggle as her last days. Dutiful parents, Doug and Donna visited their fragile offspring every day with Doug showing up as soon as possible after work. Within the settings of hospital, they treated their daughter as much like any other infant as possible. They held her, fed her, burped her and changed her. They spent as much time as possible as close as possible to their daughter. But due to Alcoa’s alleged non-compliance with the ‘72 OSHA reg., Doug’s clothes and hair held the dust he accumulated during his work day. The nature of his work, the nature of the plant, made it inevitable that much of that dust was asbestos.  Even though he wore a hospital gown when handling his child, there was plenty of opportunity for her to be exposed to the dust in his hair.

It is said that a single asbestos fiber can cause mesothelioma in those who are susceptible. The Satterfield’s tiny, frail child was indeed, susceptible. Some 22 years later, that susceptibility manifested itself in the form of the deadly disease.  Cityview Magazine, with the help of one of the Satterfield’s attorneys, Greg Coleman, interviewed the family about their ordeal in trying to make sure that no other parents find themselves in this situation.

Was Amanda your first child?
Doug: Yes, she was born September 7, 1979 at Blount Memorial Hospital here in Maryville.

What was your routine like?
Doug: She was 3 months premature.  I was working in the box shop at Alcoa.  The routine was for Donna to get up in the morning and go to the hospital and she’d come home about the time I would get home and we would both go visit Amanda, with me still in my work clothes, and stay till 10 or 11 o’clock at night.

What would you do with Amanda once you got to the hospital.
Doug: They encouraged you to hold your baby, feed and burp them. We did all that. Of course back then I had long hair, it was the style. I would put her on my shoulder and burp her like anyone else would, and I know that’s where most of the exposure came from.

How often did you visit her?
Donna: Every day for three months. We never missed a day. I went in the morning for first feeding. Doug got home at around 2:30 and we’d both come back and stay until they ran us off around 11 p.m.

After Amanda was home, did you continue to work with asbestos?
Doug: Yes, but back then we didn’t know it was asbestos. The entire time I worked at Alcoa, I was never advised about the presence of asbestos. We now know that the lining in the pots was asbestos and that is what we were cleaning all the time.
 
Did you ever think that the dust on your clothes could be hazardous?
Doug: No. We would wash our hands and wear paper gowns over our clothes before we could go back and see her, but the dust would be in my hair. I know that for a fact.

Was Doug really that dusty?
Donna: Doug was always very dusty after work. His clothes, his hair, everything about him was dusty. When he would move and undress before showering, dust would fly off. I did all our clothes in the same washroom, but I would always keep Doug’s clothes separate.

Tell us a little bit about your work environment including any health risks.
Doug: There was asbestos on the pipes over head. It would fall onto the floor and on the break tables. We didn’t have break rooms, just break tables. The tables were so covered with dust in the mornings they would have to be cleaned off. I worked around all areas at all 3 plants and there was asbestos in each area. I worked as a mechanic.  Part of a job might be to tear out the asbestos and replace it—making the fibers airborne.

When was she first diagnosed?
Doug: In 2002 she went for a regular check-up feeling fine and the gynecologist found a hard spot in her abdominal area. I was having knee surgery that day and she called us and told us they had found a place and wanted her to go to an oncologist. They scheduled her for surgery and that’s when they found out she had mesothelioma.

Had you ever heard of mesothelioma?
Doug: No, we actually thought mesothelioma was a good thing because we expected cervical cancer. Then we found out what mesothelioma was.  When the doctor told us her diagnosis, we immediately came home and looked up anything we could find on mesothelioma.  Everything we found out was bad—it was a death sentence.

When did you learn of the link with asbestos?
Doug: That day researching. I didn’t connect asbestos and Alcoa though because everything you hear about Alcoa is they’re safety-minded and they’ll take care of you. Their image in the community is that they’re heroes, they give money to different things. Alcoa would never do this. The more we dug into it, the more we found it was all lies.

What was your reaction?
Donna: I heard that asbestos was very, very bad, and to know that my husband and my child were in this kind of danger, it was scary. It made us both very angry and the more we learned, the angrier we got.
Doug: I found out when Donna called me at work. She was hysterical. She said Alcoa caused the asbestos exposure. She was so upset I had to leave work to come home. She told me what she had found out and I broke down.  I had no idea I had been working in asbestos.  I thought how could this be possible. But the more we dug into it, it was like putting pegs in a hole.  It all answered itself.

What was Amanda’s reaction?
Doug: She didn’t care as long as her dream came true. She always wanted to be married and have children, just like her mother and I. That was her dream, she didn’t have any big pictures. She liked theatre and opera, but then again she was a country girl.  She had no ambitions of being anything but a simple housewife.  That was her concern, “as long as I can still have children.”  But her first surgery killed that dream.

What was her treatment process like?
Doug: We had trouble finding a private doctor who could treat mesothelioma. The surgical oncologist gave us a medical doctor that specialized in cancer. You can’t find one in this area that knows how to treat mesothelioma.  They’ve heard of it, but can’t treat it. But we found a doctor in Washington DC who specialized in mesothelioma and we went to see him. He did a physical on Amanda and developed a plan.  They opened her up and took her vital organs and scraped them off, applied hot chemo to affected areas. But there was so many areas covered in tumors. They removed one 20 pound tumor she didn’t know she had. They removed her gallbladder. The cancer had totally destroyed her before we knew anything about it.
Donna: it was a tough surgery, we were there for over a month. The pain and suffering was awful, but Amanda was a trooper. She had it in her mind that she was going to fight and beat this disease.

And after that?
Doug: She was in a lot of pain at home. We went to the doctor weekly for chemo. At about the time she would get better from the treatment, it was time to have another. We watched our beautiful young girl waste away to basically just a skeleton of herself.
Donna: She tried really hard to keep a straight face through the pain and everything because she knew how upset we were. For about 2 and 1⁄2 years our lives were trips to and from the doctor.  She always said that as horrible as this cancer was, she was confident that she was going to be in the papers and the one who beat cancer.  She held onto that possibility ‘till she died.
Doug: Sometimes she would sense I was having a bad day because I was blaming myself for her illness. She would come to me and put her arm around my head and say it was not my fault. I
will always remember that time with her. You can’t help but to blame yourself. If Alcoa had been doing what they were supposed to be doing, Amanda would still be alive. Her death was needless.

Tell us about the lawsuit.
Doug: First of all, Amanda filed the suit. She did it to make sure employees knew of workplace hazards. I had been with Alcoa for 33 years and never heard of asbestos or a disease like this. She filed a suit to correct this problem. Why would a company, knowing what they knew about asbestos, knowing it could kill, knowing the pain and suffering it can cause a family, not tell their employees?
Donna: She wanted people to know what could happen to them at Alcoa. We still had family working there. That was all she wanted.
Doug: We wanted so much for her to have her day in court while she was still alive, but that didn’t happen. So we had to take over the lawsuit. The justice of the lawsuit was what what Amanda wanted and we told her we would finish it. We did all we could do to do the things she wanted done.

Tell us about any information you got from the lawsuit with respect to what Alcoa knew and when Alcoa knew it.
Doug: Alcoa knew in the early 70s about asbestos exposure and the dangers of taking it home.  I was in the courtroom where an older lady had a case against Alcoa for causing her mesothelioma. They had a taped deposition of Alcoa’s main industrial hygienist. The lawyer asked him if he thought it would be important for the employees to know about asbestos. And this is what the person who is paid to protect us, said, “What good would it have done?”  I’ll tell you what good it would have done, my daughter would be alive today had we known about the danger of asbestos.

Judge Young dismissed the case. Were you surprised?
Doug: No, that outcome was pretty much predictable given the location.  I knew the appeals process would start and I was confident in my representation.
Donna: I had some, you know, doubts, I had some worries, I just didn’t know.  He was more confident than I was.  But we knew that we had to fight on for Amanda.

Were you worried about the Court of Appeals?
Doug: For some reason I wasn’t concerned about the court of appeals.  I knew we had a good case.
I knew that once it got to a bigger stage that right would win.

When Alcoa appealed to the Supreme Court, did you change your mind?
Doug: The Supreme Court really made me nervous, for some reason. But one thing kept going through my mind. After we lost in Blount County, Alcoa’s spokesman came on TV and said “We consider this case has no merit”. And it’s sorta like Amanda had no merit. But after the Supreme Court decision, after the Appellate Court decision, I counted 5 Supreme Court Justices plus 3 Appellate Court Justices, eight judges said it does have merit.
Donna: When the Supreme Court decided for us, and on Amanda’s birthday, I just, I thought it was so great. I was ecstatic, I really really was. Yes, it was her birthday and we thought oh man, what a gift!  What a gift that these people see what’s right. Because you know you have right and you have wrong and everything she had had was wrong and we finally got her right. We finally got somebody that’s listening that’s gonna protect our kids, our families. And so I was feeling very good.

What’s life like now?
Doug: It’s sort of a bittersweet. We’re very thankful that it’s over with. It’s a huge burden off of us. But, in the end, we didn’t quite get done what Amanda wanted but, the Supreme Court decision that protects employees from their employers was a huge success and we can hang our hats on that. That employers have to protect their employees now from hazardous materials.  And we take great pride in that. That is going to help more people than we could ever help.

Doug, do you have any words of advice for others whose loved ones have been injured due to the workplace?
Doug: I think, first and foremost, that you have to stand up for what you believe in, what your family believes in. I think you have to protect your family, parents have to protect their children. When you do that for your family, you’re helping others. It all starts with great representation. You have to get someone who is very knowledgeable in the area that you are troubled with.

Interview by Nathan Sparks and Greg Coleman // Written by Stephen Dupree
Photo by Jimmy Chiarella
Editor’s note: Attorneys Mona Wallace and Doug Nichol also participated for the plantiffs in this case.