Cite as: 538 U. S. 135 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
creased rate of lung cancer."); A. Churg & F. Green, Pathology of Occupational Lung Disease 343 (2d ed. 1998) ("[S]tudies provide strong support for the notion that asbestosis is crucial to the development of asbestos-associated lung cancers.").
Furthermore, the asbestosis claimants' expert testified without contradiction to a risk notably "different in kind from the background risks that all individuals face," post, at 187 (Breyer, J.): Some "ten percent of the people who have the disease, asbestosis, have died of mesothelioma." App. 93; see Morgan & Seaton 350 ("The evidence suggests that, once the lungs of the susceptible subject have been primed by a sufficient dose of asbestos, then the development of [mesothelioma] is inevitable.").15 In light of this evidence, an asbestosis sufferer would have good cause for increased apprehension about his vulnerability to another illness from his exposure, a disease that inflicts "agonizing, unremitting pain," relieved only by death, post, at 168 (Kennedy, J.): Asbestosis is "a chronic, painful and concrete reminder that [a
15 The evidence at trial, Norfolk suggests, overstated the asbestosis claimants' cancer risk. Brief for Petitioner 22-24, and nn. 18-20. We do not sit to reweigh evidence based on information not presented at trial. See Tennant v. Peoria & Pekin Union R. Co., 321 U. S. 29, 35 (1944). We note, however, that none of the studies to which Norfolk refers addresses the risk of cancer for persons with asbestosis. Rather, they home in on the relationship between asbestos exposure and cancer. See Morgan, Attitudes About Asbestos and Lung Cancer, 22 Am. J. Indus. Med. 437 (1992); Goodman, Morgan, Ray, Malloy, & Zhao, Cancer in Asbestos-Exposed Occupational Cohorts: A Meta-Analysis, 10 Cancer Causes & Control 453 (1999); Erren, Jacobsen, & Piekarski, Synergy Between Asbestos and Smoking on Lung Cancer Risks, 10 Epidemiology 405 (1999). Norfolk further suggests that cancer risk from asbestos varies by fiber type. Brief for Petitioner 24, and n. 19 (citing Morgan & Seaton 346-347). Even if true, this suggestion is unavailing: Norfolk does not allege that it exposed the asbestosis claimants to the less toxic fiber type. Finally, Norfolk argues that the studies quantifying cancer risk for workers with asbestosis cannot accurately be extrapolated to evaluate the risk for these particular asbestosis claimants. Reply Brief 8-9, and n. 4. Nothing impeded Norfolk from presenting this argument to the jury.
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