An amendment has quietly been slipped into the Wisconsin state budget currently before the legislature that would limit the liability of companies who bought firms prior to 1972 that proved to have massive asbestos liability exposure. The bill is designed to protect the Crown Cork & Seal Company of Philadelphia which according to the Wisconsin State Journal has plants in Wisconsin that employ a significant number of Wisconsin residents.
Crown Cork acquired Mundet Cork in 1963, eventually merging the two companies. Mundet produced some asbestos products, and Crown Cork has paid $500 million in asbestos liability claims since buying the company for $7 million dollars. The legislation would limit liability for the parent company who engaged in a pre-1972 purchase of an asbestos product manufacturer to the acquired company’s value in today’s dollars. In the case of Crown Cork’s acquisition that figure would be $60 million, well below their $500 million outlay for liability claims over asbestos related diseases.
The lobbyist for Crown Cork is frank about the fact that the corporation has already sought and received this liability relief in ten other states, and comments that no other firm but Crown Cork has taken advantage of it. This drive for liability protection by a single company is being conducted state by state because asbestos claims can be filed in either a state or federal court.
Wisconsin legislators are concerned about, and Crown Cork is relying on, the prospect of loosing jobs if Crown Cork should be forced to shutter their Wisconsin plants. However the legislation sets a dangerous precedent for people who have developed mesothelioma from asbestos exposure forty or more years ago, caused by a company that has since been sold. Asbestosis victims don’t learn of their disease often until twenty years after their asbestos exposure, while the latency period for asbestos-caused mesothelioma cancer can be forty years or more. Knowledgeable asbestos attorneys see this type of corporate muscle being injected into a state budget process as an inherent corruption of corporate liability law.
Limiting the legal rights for current or future victims of asbestos related diseases in order to protect a corporation that made an unfortunate acquisition is a step that any legislature should approach with caution. The public health crisis created by decades of asbestos exposure to thousands of asbestos products shouldn’t be treated as an issue that requires corporate shielding. It took asbestos companies decades to admit the health dangers of their products, and now it is taking decades for the health damages to be revealed through the continuing diagnoses of mesothelioma, asbestos lung cancer and asbestosis.
