Asbestos Lawsuit Rights

Asbestos lawsuit rights may soon be extinguished

February 1, 2005
Workers exposed to asbestos might not be able to consider legal options if Congress passes asbestos litigation reform referring all asbestos injury compensation claims to a national trust fund.

The Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act would resolve all pending and future asbestos lawsuits, removing the cases from courtrooms. Senate hearings start today, and legislation could potentially reach the Senate floor by the end of the month.

The new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., hopes to get a bill to the Senate floor early in February, but the high stakes debate has yet to see a narrowing of the gap between opposing sides.

Asbestos dangers and litigation go back a long time, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banning the use of asbestos in 1989 after determining its carcinogenic properties. It does not take much exposure to asbestos for potentially deadly conditions to develop, and by the time asbestos was finally banned, tens of thousands of workers had already been exposed to it for decades.

It can take decades before the asbestos exposure results in harmful effects, which is why asbestos litigation has continued for so many years and why asbestos related deaths continue to increase. While some companies that have been the target of the massive asbestos litigation problems have argued for asbestos litigation reform, there are tens of thousands of workers that could see their rights taken away.

The Rand Corp.'s Institute for Civil Justice says 730,000 people have filed asbestos injury claims to date, costing more than $70 billion and driving 70 companies into bankruptcy, but the negligence some companies adopted, causing high amounts of asbestos exposure to affect their workers, was blatant.

In the Owens Corning bankruptcy case, company attorneys admitted the company first began stamping a health warning on cartons containing asbestos products, but not on the products themselves, in 1966. This was many years after asbestos dangers became well known, yet construction workers continued to routinely shape and saw its insulation without knowing the dangers. Plaintiffs' attorneys have described the working conditions as showering and snowing asbestos fibers all over.

Though resolution to asbestos litigation is a high priority for the Republican Party, substantial opposition in Congress and in courtrooms leaves the chances of a bill passing this year 50/50, depending on any new developments. The only sure thing so far is that the debate is expected to continue intensifying.

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