Posted on 05/11/2008 5:03:50 PM PDT by CedarDave
The fraudulent nature of many legal cases alleging damage from exposure to asbestos, long documented in legal and other publications, was officially confirmed to the world by a savvy federal judge in Texas three years ago. However, if allegations in a new report are true, similar rip-offs are still being tried.
The most disheartening thing about the report, “Trial Lawyers Inc. Asbestos,” fifth in a series from the Manhattan Institute, is that the reader can count on the fingers of one hand the number of doctors and lawyers who have been punished for abusing the system.
A federal grand jury in New York reportedly has been looking into the issue ...
What is also needed, and rarely discussed, is a way to make judges control these cases rather than sit back and watch the plaintiff bar effectively extort cash from the defendants because it’s cheaper to settle ... than to investigate thousands of cases filed at once...
Breathing airborne asbestos fibers is unquestionably dangerous. ... The number of claims against manufacturers and other companies ... may have reached 10 million; the ultimate cost of settlement has been estimated at $265 billion. Hundreds of companies have had to seek bankruptcy protection.
Probably most claims came from people, recruited by lawyers, who weren’t sick. A sample of chest X-rays in 492 cases examined by doctors at Johns Hopkins University showed 4.5 percent with abnormalities; doctors hired by plaintiff lawyers had certified that 95.9 percent showed signs of asbestos disease.
The railroad CSX Corp. ... is pursuing a civil action under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ... charging fraud and conspiracy against a Pittsburgh law firm after discovering, among other things, invented people, dead people and impostors among the plaintiffs.
It’s time this case gets the public attention it deserves.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Thanks for the ping.
Great bit.
(Yeah, I know, one is billions of dollars serious, the other is a pleasant bit of humor.)
ASBESTOS LITIGATION: FIRE IN THE COURTS Bankruptcies explode as the asbestos inferno rages on.
Res ipsa loquitor.
This is a REAL disease. My great-uncle, who never smoked, blew in asbestos insulation in ships, and died from this. The kind of lung cancer that it produces is very different than from smoking. There is a form of asbestos that is so bad that a single exposure can cause cancer many years later. Now if diagnoses and illnesses are abused by doctors and lawyers, this is another matter.
[Res ipsa loquitor.]
Thank you Learned Hand.
Anybody could have left it there.
I was a PI uncovering Workers Comp fraud. Companies would rather settle than fight because it opens their books to court review. If a company settles for say, half of the original claim, they “made” money by not losing it. Oh, we all pay the difference in higher premiums...and the shyster goes on to another state or company to to the same scam.
my fil is over 80 yrs old....
Lucky thing that you weren’t prosecuted for stealing hospital property.
***I guess that wearing PPE (which in these modern times is THE LAW) is a foreign concept to you... As seems even the tiniest bit of personal responsibility...***
When I started in this business the company I work for refused to give warnings of asbestos and other problems. PPE was available but some of the OTHER men refused to wear it because it was too hot.
I had enough sense to put something over my nose and mouth in such conditions.
As for the other man who came down with Asbestos cancer, he was a janitor who had no warning of the areas where PPE was needed.
We have had quite a few people from here who died of various cancers possibly caused by the elements here.
The plant management here thirty years was the worst possible. Now safety is TOP concern.
***This is a REAL disease. My great-uncle, who never smoked, blew in asbestos insulation in ships, and died from this.***
My father-in-law worked on Asbestos covered equipment. He died about twenty five years ago of Fiberatosis of the lungs. If you saw him struggle for breath his last days you would NEVER go without PPE today. They didn’t have PPE when he worked.
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