Free Republic

The American Tort Reform Assn calls NYC's asbestos court the nation’s top “judicial hellhole”. Silver has been blocking tort-reform bills for decades. Silver's arrest centers on his no-show legal work for asbestos-profiteer, Weitz and Luxemberg, (as well as millions in bribes and kickbacks from fixing real-estate cases)..... judges with ties to Silver and his lifelong pal, Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, presided over the cases. Silver was “of counsel” to Weitz & Luxemberg which earned unusual fast-track “red-carpet treatment” “better judges” and first dibs on jurors. Sherry Klein Heitler, the chief asbestos judge (at...

GREENSBORO — City employees and contractors may have been exposed to asbestos while working toward the demolition of War Memorial Auditorium. **SNIP** Brandon Hill, a construction project manager with the city, described the problem in an email on Oct. 13, after which work was halted and the building was shut down. “What we found was the worst case scenario of what we tried to warn staff about in August,” Hill wrote. “By allowing the scrappers and everyone else to come into the building before it was abated has caused a rather large issue.” “No one should be allowed in the...

Elizabeth Warren for what? Granted, the American electorate has been significantly dumbed down over the past few decades — think Barack Obama and Deval Patrick. But is the country really so far gone that it would turn to a plagiarizing fake Indian who thinks western Mass. has a seacoast and that Jeanne Shaheen is from Vermont? Er, yes. So by now you know about this boomlet for the former one-32nd Native American who now claims to be Okie down to her toes. Hundreds of Obama aides (enough said) are swooning over her. Some of the moonbat groups have posted Internet...

Elizabeth Warren Defrauded Asbestos Victims While Practicing Law Without a LicensePosted by Daniel Greenfield Sep 24th, 2012 Laws? They’re for little people. Laws don’t apply to Harvard professors. They apply to Harvard janitors. Compassion? Liberals are great at that. Just ask Elizabeth Warren who was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars to help Travelers Insurance deny asbestos compensation to asbestos victims… and she did it while practicing law without a license. And wearing a fake Cherokee headdress. After this latest story, I have a feeling that Elizabeth Warren wishes she had run for the Senate in Oklahoma, instead...

In her Thursday debate against Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.), Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said she did not assist the nation’s largest insurer deny settlements in asbestos-related cases. “It’s just not true,” Warren said of the charge. “The Boston Globe has looked at this; they’ve written about it.” Warren wrote a U.S. Supreme Court brief for Travelers Insurance in 2009; in the case–Travelers v. Bailey–the company sought to achieve permanent immunity against any new asbestos-related claims through the establishment of a $500 million trust. After Warren left the case, and as an extension of the legal work she did,...

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was Beirut in the nineteen seventies. But, in reality, it's the current state of the housing for which Barack Obama claims responsibility as a "community organizer." It turns out the developers enriched by his government-funded subsidies did a heck of a lot better than the folks who once lived here. As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - Independent scientific research institutes whose work influences the policies of the U.S. government as well as governments abroad, also impacts litigation in the states, an economics professor says. "The information from these think tanks does bubble up," said Professor Alex Tabarrok, chair of the Economics Department at George Mason University in Virginia. And one such organization is the Collegium Ramazzini, an independent international academy founded in 1982 by Irving J. Selikoff, Cesare Maltoni and other scientists. Selikoff is credited as a pioneer in field of asbestos research, having established a link between the inhalation of asbestos...

In New York, they call it the Bronx Jury Effect. Here, it's called the South Philadelphia Jury Effect, which looks something like a wealth redistribution scheme, according to a legal observer. "Philadelphia's courts have been bad for years," said James Copland, Director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Reform. Copland said the effect is a net result of juries that will award exorbitant amounts to plaintiffs who are suing anyone - such as doctors or large corporations - they perceive as being able to pay and that they believe should pay out large amounts. Empirical data exists that indicates...

With so much at stake for businesses weighted down by litigation costs, can juries in asbestos cases be trusted to render fair and just verdicts? While there is general agreement on some pieces of the scientific puzzle - for example there's no dispute that amphibole fibers cause mesothelioma - there are differences among highly regarded scientists about the effects of chrysotile fibers. Two Philadelphia lawyers, one a plaintiffs attorney the other a defense attorney, were asked how they address asbestos science in the courtroom.

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - There are some who say all forms of asbestos are unsafe and to be exposed to any amount is hazardous, while others say that one form of asbestos can be handled safely. Then there are some who are not sure. Some of the leading scientific researchers, experts in the field of mesothelioma research and occupational medicine, have divergent opinions on the nature of the hazards caused by asbestos. Four scientists were asked four questions about asbestos. Each one of them has distinguished ...

A Rochester man has been sentenced to six years in prison for violating the Clean Air Act and making false statements to a federal inspector. Keith Gordon-Smith, 54, was also sentenced to serve three years of probation following his prison term and ordered to pay a $1,100 fine. U.S. District Court Judge Charles J. Siragusa pronounced sentence on Gordon-Smith in federal court in Rochester on Wednesday. His sentence comes less than two weeks after ...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - Asbestos litigation has become a multibillion-dollar industry -- bankrupting large corporations, enriching lawyers and courts and providing much needed relief to victims of the deadly diseases that exposure to some types asbestos in specific amounts will cause. Asbestos has been called by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks "the worst occupational health disaster in U.S. history." But Franks, R-Ariz., condemned much of the legal process of those who are suing to recover damages caused by some of these substances. There is much about asbestos that is unknown. It is not all settled science. There is general scientific concurrence...

The practice of making duplicate claims from asbestos tort and trust systems was hammered by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) during a House subcommittee hearing Friday. Franks said that asbestos litigation has long been - and continues to be - rife with deception and exploitation, negatively effecting asbestos victims, the legal system and the employment of American workers. He noted that it has been five years since Congress provided oversight of asbestos litigation. At the time, widespread fraud in mass asbestos screenings was uncovered. "This massive fraud turned the worst occupational health disaster in U.S. history into one of the country's...

<p>BILLINGS, Mont. -- Federal regulators knew potentially contaminated bark and wood chips were being sold from a Superfund site in the asbestos-tainted town of Libby, Mont., for three years before they stopped the practice.</p> <p>That revelation comes in a letter from the Environmental Protection Agency to U.S. Sen. Max Baucus.</p>

"...The EPA experts thought it unbelievable that an environmental accident could destroy so many in one tiny town and they didn't know about it. For the most part, the townsfolk themselves had no idea of the scope of the disease that had been killing them for years... Public health and occupational medicine researchers determined that the Libby asbestos may be more carcinogenic than any other type and that it brought on illness more rapidly. While most asbestos has a latency period -- the time from the inhalation of fibers to the onset of disease -- of 20 to 40 years,...

LIBBY, Mont. (AP) — Instead of saying thanks, some residents rebuked Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Max Baucus on Monday for the very law that could help potentially thousands of asbestos victims here. The health care reform law passed last year expands Medicare coverage for the sick residents of Libby, where years of asbestos pollution from a vermiculite mine made this the nation's deadliest Superfund site. About 400 Libby residents have signed up for the new coverage as of this week, Sebelius said. But many of those from this northwestern Montana town of 3,000 who came to listen to...

LIBBY, Mont. -- Today people in the small northwest Montana town of Libby showed the Obama administration their story of sickness and loss. U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a meeting with residents, over expanded Medicare benefits.Sen. Max Baucus included coverage for Libby residents in last year's health care bill. There's a provision in the bill that includes coverage for people affected by public health emergencies. Baucus wanted Sebelius to see the town of Libby and its health problems for herself."It's very important to bring people who make key decisions--bring them to Montana, to see what I'm talking about," explained...

Last month, this column revealed that legislation to remove serpentine as California's state rock was more than the symbolic gesture it appeared to be. Sponsored by an organization with close financial ties to law firms that specialize in asbestos liability lawsuits, Senate Bill 624 flatly declares that "serpentine contains the deadly mineral chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, exposure to which increases the risk of the cancer mesothelioma (and) California has the highest rate of mesothelioma deaths in the nation." Those words could bolster lawsuits by those exposed to serpentine, but they also raised the hackles of geologists who said they...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Researchers have embarked on an ambitious study to track the health of thousands of high school graduates over a half century in a Montana town where a toxic mine has killed hundreds of people and made it the deadliest Superfund site in the nation. People who attended Libby High between 1950 and 1999 and then moved away are being asked to submit to tests to help determine the extent of contamination caused by asbestos mining and processing in the northwestern Montana town. Researchers will track down many of the 13,000-plus graduates with the help of the...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, said in July that it had found the "smoking gun" that caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1: a piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle's wing 1 minute and 22 seconds after liftoff. But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green. Because of demands that the agency help to front for...