Mesothelioma Litigation

Battalions of asbestos attorneys, paralegals, investigators, doctors, academics, claims managers, claims adjusters and the like count on asbestos litigation for all or a substantial portion of their income. The way in which the litigation has unfolded in the past couple of decades has created certain distortions in the way the “system”, if it can be called that, works. These distortions do not, generally, play out in favor of mesothelioma victims, who are the most severely injured of those unfortunate enough to have been exposed to asbestos. Remember, those individuals who have uncontested diagnoses of mesothelioma have highly meritorious cases: in addition to the severity of the disease process, the fact is that the only known cause of the disease is asbestos exposure (smoking, for example, has nothing whatsoever to do with it) and the level of exposure required is quite low, especially comparison to the level of exposure required for a disease like asbestosis.

In the vast majority of the early, pioneering cases in the asbestos litigation, however, the plaintiffs were claiming non-malignant diseases (as is the case today). The two categories were scarring of the internal tissue of the lung (asbestosis) and scarring of the lining of the chest cavity (pleural scarring, also referred to as pleural thickening, pleural plaques or pleural encasement, depending on the manifestation of the scarring). The plaintiffs in these early cases were asbestos insulation workers (also commonly called “pipecoverers” or “insulators”) who worked at construction sites such as power stations, chemical plants and refineries, and workers who performed the same sorts of tasks in shipyards (commonly called “laggers”). It soon developed that steam fitters and other trades also had very high rates of disease, and those unions were accordingly screened as well, resulting in further influxes of claims into various state and federal court systems throughout the country. This brings us up As the litigation has progressed through the 1980s and into the 1990s, the trend of what are called “mass settlements” has emerged. This is only logical, as claims that are grouped by the thousand have to be handled en masse — there is no other way. This type of settlement comes into being when an attorney or law firm representing a large number of asbestos plaintiffs reaches at least a tacit agreement with an asbestos company on what certain types of cases are worth, and what that company’s share of that payment should be. A system falls into place where, for each claimant, the attorney submits medical records and evidence of exposure to that company’s product, and the company evaluates this submission and writes a check, generally based on the type and severity of the disease the plaintiff has. This is generally done on a “matrix,” where, for example, the company will pay x dollars for a mesothelioma, y dollars for a lung cancer, z dollars for asbestosis, and so forth. These types of settlements started to take place relatively early in the litigation with boiler manufacturers and gasket/packing manufacturers whose share of the total liability in many cases was considered (not always correctly) to be much lower than that of the thermal insulation manufacturers.to the early 1980s.