Mesotheileoma Lawsuits
The companies that mined and sold asbestos and those that used asbestos extensively in their products were very aware of the connection between asbestos and mesotheileoma/ Rather than alert their employees, the government and the general public to the dangers of asbestos, though, these companies actively conspired to cover up any evidence that asbestos causes serious illnesses. Their cover ups and lies put all their workers, the families of their workers, and all those who came into contact with their products at risk of developing mesotheileoma and other asbestos-related diseases like asbestosis and lung cancer. It also opened the companies to a series of lawsuits that exposed the deliberate negligence and malicious behavior that exposed entire generations of American workers to one of the deadliest health menaces of our times.
Johns-Manville, one of the country’s largest asbestos manufacturers, faced asbestos-related lawsuits as early as the 1920s. The main deciding factors in those lawsuits were the same then as they often are now – at what point did companies know that asbestos exposure causes mesotheileoma and other lung diseases, and did they offer sufficient warning to workers exposed to asbestos for the workers to protect themselves. The Johns-Manville lawyers argued then that the workers contributed to their own damages because they knew or should have known about the dangers of working with asbestos, and did not take sufficient steps to protect themselves from those dangers. In those early days, that argument was often successful in defending the company from lawsuits.
It wasn’t until the late 1970s that pioneering law firms uncovered the depth of the cover ups, negligence and deliberate conspiracy to hide the dangers of asbestos from employees, the government and the American public. When juries heard about memos instructing company doctors to lie to employees and about company executives who flippantly expressed their disregard for worker health, they were astounded and outraged. They showed their outrage in the best way available to a jury—they returned multi-million dollar verdicts and ordered companies like Johns-Manville and Dow Chemical to pay the injured workers millions of dollars in damages.
Unfortunately for many victims of asbestos exposure, the U.S. legal system was not designed to deal with lawsuits for injuries that resulted from cumulative exposure to toxic substances. Often, workers diagnosed with mesotheileoma would attempt to get workers’ compensation for their injuries only to find that the statute of limitations to file a claim had passed long before they even knew that they were ill. This led some lawyers to file pre-emptive lawsuits, seeking damages for those who had been exposed to asbestos during their work but who had not yet become significantly impaired by their illness. In some cases, the only way to get compensation for those workers who would otherwise be denied their right to be compensated for a work-related injury was to bundle their lawsuit together with those who were already diagnosed with mesotheileoma and dying of the disease.
The lawsuits against companies like Corning Manufacturing and Dow Chemical continued, and while some people won settlements worth millions, the manufacturers and their insurance companies also scored some significant victories. Asbestos litigation was difficult because of the amount of time that passed between exposure to asbestos and the illness that it caused. The companies successfully argued that they should not have to pay compensation to workers who were not even ill yet. They pushed courts to uphold existing statutes of limitations and argued against more liberal definitions of “discovery” that would start the statute of limitations running when a worker was told by a doctor that he had mesotheileoma rather than at the time he was exposed to asbestos.
Many states rewrote existing statutes of limitations to allow asbestos lawsuits to go forward, while others created roadblocks to make it harder to bring suit against companies that knowingly allowed their workers to be exposed to the deadly carcinogen. The insurance companies for those manufacturers lobbied lawmakers to put the brakes on asbestos and related lawsuits that, they said, were bankrupting the entire manufacturing base of the United States.
Since the 1970s, there have been some very significant settlements in asbestos lawsuits. In some cases, lawyers for the defendants have negotiated settlements that established a fund out of which all future asbestos claims are paid. The Manville Trust was one of the first, and served as a model upon which other mesotheileoma trusts have been built.
Because the laws surrounding mesotheileoma lawsuits vary so much from state to state, anyone who is considering filing a suit for compensation because of asbestosis, mesotheileoma or an asbestos-related cancer should contact a lawyer who specializes in mesotheileoma lawsuits. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesotheileoma or an asbestos-related disease, it’s important that you contact an experienced mesotheileoma attorney as soon as possible after your diagnosis to learn about your rights to compensation and how to safeguard them.
