Asbestos: Law and Liability

There is an extensive history of asbestos companies that suppressed information indicating health problems among their employees.  During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s asbestos companies such as Johns Manville, Eagle Picher and National Gypsum all stifled or rewrote company research material and testimony on health and asbestos. 

Other sources were producing their own evidence however; in 1933 Metropolitan Life Insurance doctors reported a 29% asbestosis rate among Johns Manville workers in a New Jersey plant.  In 1944,Metropolitan Life  reported finding 42 cases of asbestosis among 195 asbestos miners.  In 1964 the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study by Dr. Irving Selikoff showing that people who work with asbestos-containing materials have an abnormal rate of asbestosis, mesothelioma and other cancers.

In 1933, Johns Manville privately settled a lawsuit filed by eleven former employees and asbestos sufferers.  There were other scattered instances of legal action by victims of asbestos exposure during the first half of the twentieth century, but it was not until the Federal Government took substantive action regarding asbestos usage and exposure that the flood of asbestos lawsuits began.

The Nature of Asbestos Liability Today

Since 1970 there have been approximately 600,000 liability claims or suits filed against asbestos producing companies and businesses that used asbestos products, causing asbestos exposure.  Over one hundred companies have filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of asbestos lawsuits seeking damages.  These bankruptcy proceedings were not for the purpose of dissolving corporations; they were filed under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, which provides time for the company to reorganize its finances and develop a plan to pay creditors. 

Many of these companies remained in bankruptcy for years, all the while functioning as going concerns.  A pattern of dealing with liability protection for asbestos lawsuits developed, however, following the settlement of the Johns Manville bankruptcy filing, dating from 1982. 

Corporations threatened with endless exposure to asbestos liability established trust funds that exist for the sole purpose of paying off asbestos liability claims.  In return for a trust fund established with a negotiated amount of money, the degree of liability for the bankrupt company was capped at the amount of the trust fund by the court.  Businesses that established these trust funds emerged from bankruptcy and many are now once again successful corporate enterprises.

Statutes of Limitation

Product liability and industrial safety lawsuits are generally considered civil cases, or torts.  For most torts there is a statute of limitations; if the suit is not filed within a specific period of time after the alleged wrong, the case is invalid.  Most statutes of limitations are less than a decade.  For asbestosis and mesothelioma cancer, two asbestos- caused diseases, the symptoms may not develop for decades after the asbestos exposure occurred.

State courts have dealt with this issue in a variety of ways; in most cases the statute for asbestos cases begins to run after the disease is diagnosed, rather than the point at which asbestos exposure occurred.  There are variations on this method, as there are among the federal courts in different districts.

There are also issues of liability for people who may get sick from asbestos exposure but haven’t yet, as well as for individuals who were not firm employees but were exposed to asbestos as the result of a visit to an asbestos-tainted facility.

Issues for People Considering an Asbestos Lawsuit

Tens of thousands of legal claims are still filed every year over health problems as the result of asbestos exposure.  The asbestos trust funds that were established to pay off claims do so as a matter of course, removing many of these claims from courtroom jurisdiction.  However lawsuits are still employed to extract compensation: some suits are for individual plaintiffs and some are class actions suits. 

Asbestos attorneys make a determination of what sort of filing is necessary and in which court or with which trust fund based on the facts of each client’s asbestos exposure and resultant (or likely) health problems.  Certain sets of situations will find sympathy with certain courts at both the state and federal level.  Asbestos attorneys today design a claim for asbestos compensation based on thirty years of court history and rulings on claim validity.

Asbestos torts are the biggest body of civil liability cases in the history of the country

The rules of viability and evidence requirements established in thirty five years of rulings have caused many asbestos attorneys to file for compensation with more than one trust fund; or to file suit against multiple corporate defendants.  Such is the legal landscape for asbestos compensation cases today; it is an area that can only be successfully navigated by an experienced asbestos attorney.

We have addressed a number of legal issues surrounding asbestos in separate pages, listed below.  Also listed below is our phone number, while an online request for information is posted at the top of the page.  For a free, in-depth analysis of your potential asbestos claim, contact our office and one of our asbestos attorneys will review your history within the context of today’s asbestos law.