ASBESTOS JUDGMENTS COST DUPONT $7 MILLION CHEMICAL GIANT LOSES THREE OF FIVE CLAIMS

Asbestos battle looms in ‘08 session

Publication: THE Register-Herald
Published: 12/21/07
Page: *
Headline: Asbestos battle looms in ‘08 session
Byline: Mannix Porterfield

CHARLESTON — A battle is shaping up in the 2008 legislative session on how West Virginia assigns asbestos cases for disposition in the court system.

At stake is a failed measure from the last regular session, SB374, supported by a coalition of business interests, among them coal companies, utilities and the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.

In opposition is the West Virginia Association for Justice, headed by Charleston attorney Bill Schwartz. Using slides of dying victims of mesothelioma for dramatic effect, Schwartz said the case management order was worked out by the state Supreme Court with litigants four years ago and has proven to work. Under that system, Schwartz said asbestos cases are handled in a timely fashion, and for the terminal clients he has represented, time is a critical element.

“When a person comes to me, the clock is ticking,” he said.

One slide depicted a weeping former supervisor at Union Carbide, lamenting the fact he wouldn’t live to see his daughter graduate from high school.

Schwartz disputed the business community’s claim of a “litigation explosion” in asbestos lawsuits, noting 123 were filed in 2005 in West Virginia, another 103 last year, and 27 to date this year.

The attorney said the legislation before Judiciary Subcommittee is stacked in favor of corporations. “Everything in this bill says, ‘defendant wins, defendant wins, defendant wins,” he said.

But Brenda Nicholas Harper, representing the business coalition, pointed to a national “explosion” of such litigation since 1982, when cases that year numbered 21,000 and now have reached 730,000, with defense costs leaping from $1 billion a quartet of a century ago to the current $70 billion.

Harper said the bill installs some guards, such as disallowing “assembly line screenings” that can occur just outside a plant or manufacturing complex.

She pointed to the mysterious case of a doctor signing off on such tests and when attempts were made to locate him, no. such physician lived at the address listed, nor could his name be found in a register of licenses.

“We have a phantom doctor in West Virginia,” she told the subcommittee.