Proposed Bill Over Asbestos Lawsuits Would Harm Victims, Benefit Corporations: Public Citizen

Two asbestos-related bills passed out of committee last week in the U.S. House of Representatives, which may further prevent victims of asbestos exposure from getting compensation and relief if they are enacted, according to a prominent consumer watchdog group. 

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee marked up and passed two bills that the group Public Citizen and other critics say are aimed at blocking victims who have suffered chronic and often fatal illnesses from being compensated by companies that knowingly manufactured and exposed them to cancer-causing agents.

One of the bills, the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act, H.R. 526, calls for asbestos compensation trusts to entertain requests for further information by companies on claimants pursuing asbestos lawsuits.

The Republican bill has two main provisions, allowing corporations to make information requests of asbestos trusts and delaying payments until those requests were met. The bill also 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.

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.

“The FACT Act does nothing to improve the lives of those facing an asbestos death sentence through no fault of their own,” Public Citizen said in a letter to committee members (PDF). “The bill instead adds insult to injury and inexcusably invades the privacy of victims by requiring public disclosure of personal claim information, including portions of their social security numbers, opening the door to identity theft and possible discrimination.”

Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act

The second bill passed out of the committee last week, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, H.R. 758, would require courts to level sanctions against attorneys and litigants who violate Rule 11 of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, which involves pleadings for an improper purpose or that contain frivolous arguments.

The bill calls for the sanctioned parties to have to compensate the opposing party and strikes a provision that negates the rule if the filing or pleading is corrected within 21 days. It also grants the court the power to dismiss such cases, among other actions.

Public Citizen says the bill returns Rule 11 to a previous version that was broadly considered to be disastrous.

“Studies have documented how mandatory Rule 11 sanctions were used disproportionately against consumer (particularly civil rights) attorneys and those attempting to extend the law in support of unpopular causes,” Public Citizen wrote in another letter to the committee (PDF). “The previous Rule had a chilling effect on lawsuits brought by workers, consumers and seniors against corporate misconduct. The proposed Rule 11 changes in H.R. 758 will make federal litigation more complicated, costly, and inaccessible to consumers and employees.”

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.