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<p>FOR the lawyers who file lawsuits against corporations, it looked like the next big thing — the next fen-phen, asbestos or even tobacco, the mother of all jackpots.</p> <p>Like the lawsuits involving asbestos, the fire-retardant material that when inhaled can cause a horrible lung cancer, the new suits involved a substance that under certain circumstances could harm the lungs: silica, a purified sand used as a cleaning abrasive as well as in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials. Silica dust, when inhaled, can lodge in the lungs, causing silicosis, a disabling and often fatal lung disease.</p>

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. (AP) - A huge cloud of construction dust blowing across the field where his son played Little League signaled to Lance McMahan it was time to get out of this fast-growing suburb above Sacramento. Watching from a lawn chair as bulldozers reshaped a nearby hillside into another setting for high-priced homes, McMahan knew that the ground getting torn up and carried by the wind over the baseball diamond contained natural veins of asbestos. "That was like the last straw." said McMahan, recalling the day six years ago when he decided his family's health was more important...

People who live near the kind of rocks that can contain asbestos are more likely than other Californians to contract a rare cancer, according to a study being published in the nation's leading respiratory medical journal. The study by University of California, Davis, and Harvard University researchers has been eagerly awaited by federal officials trying to understand possible links between the rocks beneath our feet and asbestos-related diseases. It could be "a huge part of the puzzle," said Dan Meer, one of several EPA officials who had heard the study's results described at public meetings. Still, they and others characterized...

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee on Thursday approved long-stalled legislation that would shield manufacturers and insurers from asbestos lawsuits. The measure would create a $140 billion trust fund to compensate people sickened by exposed to asbestos, a fibrous mineral commonly used until the mid-1970s in insulation and fireproofing material. Asbestos has tiny fibers that can cause cancer and other ailments when inhaled. The diseases often take decades to develop. Several Republicans on the Judiciary Committee plan to oppose the legislation when it reached the full Senate. Their support in committee allowed the chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to advance the...

A federal grand jury has been convened in Manhattan to consider possible criminal charges arising out of civil litigation over exposure to silica and asbestos, according to lawyers involved in the civil cases. The grand jury has subpoenaed documents from at least one of the companies that screened people who later claimed they had suffered injuries as a result of exposure to silica, a material that can cause respiratory disease and that is used in making glass, paints, ceramics and other materials. The federal investigation comes amid questions about some silica-related claims that emerged in federal court proceedings in Corpus...

Washington FOR over two decades, Congress has wrestled unsuccessfully with the difficult problem of asbestos. Now, with Congress about to produce legislation that will compensate Americans hurt by asbestos without clogging the courts and causing undue economic hardship, Dick Armey, a Republican and the former House majority leader, has led a huge and misleading advertising campaign to defeat the bill. The bill, which Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and I introduced last month with broad bipartisan support, would use a $140 billion trust fund to pay asbestos victims in a no-fault program similar to...

Endorsed by President Bush, manufacturers, big labor and veterans groups, a $140 billion trust fund for workplace asbestos victims was on a fast track for approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee, leaving Californians exposed to asbestos in the environment on uncertain legal ground. But in the final bill rewrite, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California persuaded colleagues to make compensation available to people sickened by asbestos outside the workplace and set aside $40 million for federal agencies to study the problem of "naturally occurring asbestos." Her amendment to the trust-fund bill marks the first federal legislation to grapple with a...

In political circles, it is common knowledge that Democrats at all levels rely on generous financial support from plaintiffs’ lawyers. Indeed, during the last election, the American Association of Trial Lawyers (ATLA) gave more than $2.1 million to Democrats. And contributions to Democrats at all levels from individual members of the plaintiffs’ bar probably totaled more than $100 million. So when ATLA recently threatened to postpone and curtail its fundraising efforts for Democrats, it sent a clear and powerful signal: ATLA is scared to death. What has the nation’s leading assemblage of ambulance chasers quaking in their wing tips? It’s...

Asbestos litigation is a continuing crisis. Thousands of truly impaired asbestos victims are deprived of just compensation through the courts because their legitimate claims must compete with those of the unimpaired. At the same time, hundreds of firms face the imminent threat of bankruptcy at the hands of a predatory trial bar with all the economic calamities that inevitably result... The current system is irrational and unfair. The problem is compounded by an elite class of trial lawyers who have turned asbestos litigation into an entrepreneurial pursuit. Worse still, the hundreds of millions of dollars siphoned by the trial bar...

Asbestos and Alar are only two of many instances where vast sums were spent on hypothetical risk while science was ignored. In the past we used our natural resources freely. We took great pride in our ability to convert resources into products with a direct benefit to the public. We turned trees into houses, coal and iron into automobiles. Today we hear that we must stop using our economic resources. Scale back! Harvest fewer trees. Drill fewer oil wells. Use less fertilizer. Build no new power plants. Encourage the government to buy back land it once offered to its people,...

AUSTIN — This time, leading Republicans and Democrats agreed. They joined together at the Texas Capitol on Thursday to proclaim that they don't want an expansion of gambling. "Empty promises to get rich quick do nothing but bring devastation and addiction," said Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party. "We're being asked to gamble away our children's future in the biggest con game of all times." Legislators looking to cut property taxes while giving more money to schools are considering more than 20 gambling proposals, including video slot machines at racetracks and Las Vegas-style casinos. Conservative Republicans and a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to establish a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund was undergoing a rewrite on Wednesday after warnings that a provision affecting claims for silica, another lung-scarring mineral, could derail the legislation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he thought he could solve the problem and save his plan to set up a trust fund to replace asbestos litigation. But other Republicans expressed exasperation with the process, charging Democrats were moving the goalposts each time bipartisan agreement on the fund seemed close. ``Right now I don't think it (Specter's proposal) has much support on the part...

Companies battling lawsuits brought by people claiming injuries caused by exposure to asbestos or silica have long contended that they are the victims of fraud. The companies finally have evidence that their concerns may be real. Thousands of people who have said they were injured by one potentially lethal material are apparently double-dipping - now asserting separately that they were injured by the other. More than half the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit in Texas seeking compensation for exposure to silica - used in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials - previously filed claims against a trust set up...

WASHINGTON - Republicans will try for quick action on a measure that would end asbestos lawsuits in exchange for a trust fund to compensate victims, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) said Tuesday, despite a two-year deadlock. "It is my hope to be able to present a bill through markup at a very, very early date," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., who will become Judiciary chairman later this week. "Whether that can be done in late January or early February remains to be seen." Republicans say Democrats wouldn't let previous...

Investors seem to be betting that Congress will fix the asbestos mess this coming year.... We suspect they're too optimistic, and for now we take more heart from last week's landmark decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the $1.2 billion Combustion Engineering settlement. ...[O}ur view is that the judiciary is finally exercising some adult supervision over a mess of its own making. Combustion Engineering, a unit of European construction giant ABB, had become a model of how trial lawyers abuse "prepackaged" bankruptcies to rake in millions for their unimpaired clients, while leaving real cancer victims with...

...For years trial lawyers have so dominated this legal arena that the companies they sued have taken to collaborating with their persecutors -- just to be put out of their misery. Some 70 of these firms are in bankruptcy, many of them willing partners in a racket that hands most of their assets to the tort bar and the 90% of plaintiffs who aren't ill, while the truly sick waste away in an overcrowded court system. Yet there are a few hopeful signs. Most concrete is Ohio's decision to pass the first statewide reform demanding that plaintiffs meet certain medical...

ANGLETON -- A jury has ruled that Union Carbide Corp. was not fraudulent in how it sold asbestos for use in Kelly-Moore Paint Co.'s interior finishing products -- a verdict an attorney for the paint company said probably will force it into bankruptcy in the face of tens of thousands of lawsuits. Kelly-Moore had sued Union Carbide for $1.3 billion plus punitive damages, claiming the Dow Chemical Co. subsidiary had hidden from it the dangers of asbestos. The jury ruled in favor of Union Carbide on Friday, The Facts, Brazoria County's daily newspaper, reported Saturday. San Carlos, Calif.-based Kelly-Moore is...

The Sierra Club this week attacked the President for supposedly showing "reckless disregard" by failing to warn the public of alleged health risks posed by "toxic" smoke from the World Trade Center rubble. "The desire to reopen Wall Street cannot justify placing civilian safety at risk," asserted the Sierra Club. Now there's no question that lower Manhattan residents were exposed to varying levels of smoke, dust and fumes — including asbestos, mineral fibers and a soup of chemicals — as a result of the WTC collapse on and after Sept. 11. There's also no question that some residents developed new,...

... The study appears in Academic Radiology, one of the top peer-reviewed radiology journals. Led by Joseph Gitlin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, the study delves into the tawdry world of asbestos X-rays. A crucial part of any asbestos lawsuit are the "expert witness" physicians who make a living interpreting chest X-rays and telling juries that plaintiffs have suffered asbestos-related injuries. But as the new study shows, "expert" doesn't mean what it used to. Mr. Gitlin obtained 492 X-rays that had been examined by doctors retained by plaintiffs' lawyers and entered as evidence in asbestos lawsuits. These X-ray readers...

WASHINGTON - Bret Williams isn't used to being on the business end of a stethoscope. The 52-year-old doctor's place was on the other side, listening to the heartbeats of the rural North Carolinians who were once his patients. Not any more, not since he learned last year that he has a crippling disease himself: malignant mesothelioma caused by asbestos exposure from childhood, summer jobs and home repairs. Nonetheless, the Hillsborough, N.C., internist is fighting a plan in Congress that would provide him and thousands of other Americans compensation from asbestos companies but bar them from suing. Pushing the proposal is...