Lawmakers Seek to Delay Asbestos Compensation, Force Victims To Release Information

Consumer watchdogs are sounding a warning about a new bill proposed in Congress, which they indicate is designed to delay compensation for asbestos victims and will endanger their privacy. 

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law held a hearing on a proposed bill known as H.R. 526, the “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act of 2015.”

The legislation calls for asbestos compensation trusts to entertain requests for information by companies on claimants pursuing asbestos lawsuits.

The Republican bill has two main provisions. The bill allows corporations to make information requests of asbestos trusts, and would allow payments to be delayed until those requests were met. The other provision calls for asbestos trusts, set up to handle asbestos claims without victims having to go through a long lawsuit, to put private information about asbestos victims on publicly accessible websites.

Names, addresses, employment history, medical information, the amount of money (which could be hundreds of thousands or millions) they were compensated and even part of their social security number would be accessible to the public at the request of corporations.

Proponents of the bill claim that it will make the process more transparent, allowing companies to detect “double dippers,” which are plaintiffs who get compensated by the fund and then sue multiple companies at different times for asbestos exposure without telling the companies that they were exposed to other asbestos products and made other claims, according to testimony provided by corporate defense attorneys at Wednesday’s hearings.

The consumer watchdog group Public Citizen warns that the bill is not what it appears to be. In actually, they say the bill is a device that can be used by companies to delay payments to asbestos victims indefinitely through repeated, unlimited requests that could easily prevent the payments from ever happening due to the short life expectancy of victims of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related ailments.

In a letter (PDF) to lawmakers on the committee, sent out on February 4, Public Citizen called the bill “extremely misguided.”

“This bill will delay and deny justice to people suffering from lethal asbestos-related diseases, severely invade the privacy of asbestos victims and their families, and interfere with state legal systems without justification,” the letter indicates. “It will do little more than harm dying victims, including many former Navy shipyard workers, while advantaging big corporations responsible for compensating them. For decades, secrecy and deceit have been a way of business for the asbestos industry and this bill does absolutely nothing to change that.”

Public Citizen points out in its letter that by publishing private information such as addresses, how much people got paid and part of their social security number, the law would essentially be giving criminals private information about sick or bereaved individuals who just received large sums of money. However, the law does not prevent corporations from demanding secrecy in their end of settlements at any time and for any reason.

The group also warns that the system would allow companies to make numerous requests that overburdened asbestos trusts would be hard-pressed to answer quickly, delaying compensation to victims.

The problem is that mesothelioma and other asbestos-related ailments are typically not diagnosed until they are in advanced stages, with victims often having only months to live. The bill, as Public Citizen characterizes it, would allow corporations to “run out the clock” on asbestos victims’ lives.

“Since at least the 1930’s, asbestos companies and their insurers have been denying responsibility for the millions of deaths and illnesses caused by this deadly product. The companies hid the dangers posed by asbestos exposure, lied about what they knew, fought against liability for the harms caused, tried to change the laws that held them responsible, and to this day, they still fight against banning asbestos in the U.S.,” Public Citizen’s letter states. “The asbestos industry is not interested in transparency. This legislation is nothing but another attempt by the industry to avoid responsibility for the grave harms they have caused.”

Asbestos and Mesothelioma Litigation

Abestos injury lawsuits are the longest-running mass tort in U.S. history, with more than 600,000 people having filed a case against more than 6,000 defendants after being diagnosed with mesothelioma or other related injuries that were allegedly caused by inhaling asbestos fibers.

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer, which is only known to be caused by exposure to asbestos and breathing asbestos fibers. It is a lethal disease that is often at a very advanced stage when a diagnosis is made, resulting in a very short life-expectancy.

According to the letter, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that about 3,000 people die from mesothelioma and asbestosis every year.

In addition to claims for workers exposed to asbestos in the course of her employment, in recent years there have been a growing number of secondary exposure mesothelioma cases have been brought on behalf of spouses, children and other family members alleging they developed the disease after breathing asbestos fibers brought home in the hair or on the clothing of individuals who worked directly with the material.