How Asbestos Litigation Affects You
This year a growing legal crisis may affect you more than you could imagine. With proposed bills that would limit asbestos company liability and significantly gash payouts, some worry that lawmakers who are in charge of advocating for everyday may be pandering to special interests.
Prolonged asbestos exposure can lead to dangerous health conditions including mesothelioma, asbestosis, and lung cancer. Every year 2500 to 3000 unusual cases are diagnosed every year with thousands more outside the United States as other countries have been slow to adopt asbestos bans (though asbestos is not completely outlawed in the United States and exists in many products manufactured today).
For the most part treatment only prolongs a person’s life by a short span because the disease is often discovered in advanced stages.
The problem that lawmakers are trying to address is the abundance of cases currently sitting dormant in our legal system. The case backlog is enormous and cases (if unsettled) take years before they go before the courts and often the victim is not alive by the time a judgment is reached.
Furthermore numerous companies have gone out of business because they could no longer operate under the financial strains of numerous multi-million dollar judgments. This in turn hurts victims trying to receive compensation.
If this system continues, the expected case filings over the next decade will fabricate a standstill for legal action.
One of the major problems with asbestos cases is the fact that a number of these lawsuits are speculative. A person who was exposed but has yet to bag a conclusive diagnosis of any asbestos related illness may file in court.
The Proposed Solution
The Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2005 came to existence shortly after March of 2004 after Pres. Bush. proposed limits on asbestos related “junk” lawsuits at a speech in
Originally introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Elegant Act would establish a $140 billion trust fund to supplant litigation as a means to compensate victims of asbestos and limit liability.
The maximum award would be $750,000 but with an estimated 500,000 possible claims. The fund would quickly deteriorate and could not pay victims. ($375,000,000,000,000 would be needed according to estimates if each received the maximum)
The bill was initially defeated last year but has stuck around the Senate Judiciary Committee which last week approved new amendments to the bill including support for those exposed during 9/11 and hurricane Katrina.
However the bill includes an exposure length minimum of 5 years which effectively eliminates both groups.
On April 26, 2005 supporters and detractors testified before Congress.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, testified before the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary against this proposed legislation.
He testified that many of the bill’s provisions are unsupported by medicine and would unfairly exclude a large number of people who have become ill or died from asbestos: “The reach to the diagnosis of disease caused by asbestos that is set forth in this bill is not consistent with the diagnostic criteria established by the American Thoracic Society. If the bill is to deliver on its promise of fairness, these criteria will need to be revised.”
Also opposing the bill are the American Public Health Association and the Asbestos Workers Union.
The supporters included members of the United States Navy who compose around 1/3 of the deaths each year as well as various unions.
Trial lawyers have been split over their aid. Corporate attorneys would lose hundreds of billable hours but would retain job security for financially strapped clients. Victim’s lawyers would lose even more as filing would not require legal counsel.
No matter what, a solution needs to be reached soon but that solution needs to be equitable to all sides enthusiastic. The bill is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee but the current version could be voted on when the new session begins.
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Asbestos and It’s Conditions
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Filed under Mesothelioma Prognosis by on Feb 16th, 2011. 