Asbestos litigation is rife with fraud and abuse

America’s legal system intended to compensate people truly harmed by asbestos, but the system is out-of-control and driven by plaintiff lawyer greed. Put simply, the current process is treating injured persons unequally and taking compensation away from legitimate future claimants. The causes? A lack of oversight and transparency, conflicts of interest, weak evidence standards, high fees, inequitable treatment of claims and outright fraud.

Rooting out fraud and abuse now will help legitimate asbestos claimants who deserve to be compensated for their injuries, as well as the millions of other Americans who are affected by asbestos litigation abuse.

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ASBESTOS FRAUD AND ABUSE

HOW IT WORKS

Asbestos claimants have two ways to get compensation:

  1. Go to court, and sue the company(ies) for claimed exposure to asbestos, and
  2. Go to an asbestos trust, and make a claim. Many companies that used asbestos have set up asbestos bankruptcy trusts to fund payments to claimants legitimately harmed by the company.

Claimants have legitimate recourse to seek payments through both processes and from multiple sources based on their exposure record.

Some lawyers say "why stop there?"

Often, asbestos plaintiff lawyers go beyond the facts of their clients’ claims. The lawyers go to more and more sources and provide conflicting “facts” about exposure histories, tailored to seek maximum payout from each company and trust, claiming their client was mostly harmed by the named company.

How do they get away with it?

You might wonder what the managers of these trusts are doing to vet the claims, to make sure they’re not getting ripped off. But it’s not clear they do, or even want to.

Fox guarding the henhouse?

Asbestos trusts are often controlled by the asbestos plaintiff lawyers – the very same lawyers who are submitting claims. Typically they keep their methods and operations hidden from the public, and oversight by the bankruptcy courts is negligible at best.

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GARLOCK

EXAMPLES OF THE ABUSE

Recent court proceedings in North Carolina have helped reveal the degree of fraud and abuse in asbestos litigation and trust claims.

To help estimate the future trust liability of gasket maker Garlock Sealing Technologies, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges allowed a review of 15 prior lawsuits against the company, which revealed evidence was improperly withheld in every suit.

Hodges observed that Garlock’s prior lawsuits were “infected by the manipulation of exposure evidence.” He found that plaintiff lawyers were hiding evidence, coaching clients on what to say, and failing to disclose claims made in other cases.

  • After denying he had ever seen anyone remove pipe insulation, a former electronics technician received $450,000 from Garlock. Then he filed claims with seven other trusts, stating he had personally removed insulation and identifying the products by name.

Based upon Garlock’s litigation history, plaintiff attorneys estimated its present and future liability to be $1.4 billion. However, having learned the estimate was inflated by a history of deceitful litigation, Hodges ruled that Garlock was only liable for $125 million – less than nine percent of the plaintiff lawyers’ estimate.

On December 4, 2014, Judge Hodges ruled against the plaintiffs’ committee motion to reopen the liability estimate process, holding to his $125 million ruling.

This ongoing case may help expose – and help stem – the rampant fraud and abuse in asbestos claims.

FABRICATING EVIDENCE

EXAMPLES OF THE ABUSE

Personal Injury Lawyers Liable for Racketeering

The lack of transparency around asbestos claims makes it difficult to expose suspected fraud. Recently, however, two asbestos lawyers and their radiologist were found liable for filing fraudulent lawsuits.

Freight transportation company CSX filed racketeering claims in 2007 against Robert Pierce and Louis Raimond over asbestos lawsuits they had filed against the company, when CSX discovered hundreds of switched diagnoses by radiologist Ray Harron.

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Fraud in injury claims degrades the U.S. system and makes it harder for truly injured persons to be treated fairly.
- Ellen M. Fitzsimmons, CSX executive vice president for law and public affairs
Manufacturing Silica Claims from Old Asbestos Evidence

To identify clients, many asbestos plaintiff lawyers set up mass X-ray screenings in the 1990s, with “diagnoses” done by experts hired by those lawyers – a recipe for fraud.

U.S. District Judge Janis Jack was overseeing some 10,000 claims for silica exposure in 2005, and an investigation revealed more than half of the plaintiffs had already filed claims for asbestos exposure. Asbestos and silica diseases are not usually found in combination, and if both were present an expert X-ray reader should have noted it.

The diagnoses were driven by neither health nor justice: they were manufactured for money. The record does not reveal who originally devised this scheme, but it is clear that the lawyers, doctors and screening companies were all willing participants.
- U.S. District Judge Janis Jack

 

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T.H.A.N. TRUST

EXAMPLES OF THE ABUSE

Federal regulations say all who qualify for asbestos trust payments should be treated equitably. However, as asbestos plaintiff lawyers file excessive fraudulent claims, later claimants may receive a small fraction of the originally intended compensation.

The reasons include lax policing of claims, lack of transparency, and self-serving and ethically conflicted trust oversight. The ethical conflicts: The same plaintiff lawyers who have the profit motive of getting fees for settling their own clients’ claims also control the bankruptcy trusts.

An example is the $900 million T. H. Agriculture & Nutrition (THAN) Trust.

In 2009, the THAN Trust was created and began distributing $387 million to existing claimants at 100 percent value; it also closed the doors on any new claims. Sixteen months later, it finally allowed new claims but, without explanation, reduced payment values by 70 percent.

In this pre-packaged, bankruptcy and trust deal, the company that had 14,000 asbestos claims sees the number jump to 90,000 at trust formation. Also, the company’s largest prior annual payout was $39 million, and the payout process at trust formation jumped to $387 million.

Simply put, the facts in THAN and other asbestos bankruptcies continue to fail the smell test. We hope that exposing the facts of THAN will help judges, legislators, and other public policymakers understand the need for real, meaningful transparency when billions of dollars are to be paid out of trusts created as adjuncts to federal courts.
- Hartley, Christian, Scarcella and Kelso

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WINNERS

LOSERS

Asbestos Plaintiff Lawyers

These lawyers are generating substantial wealth with little transparency and oversight, profiting on up to 40 percent of the value of their clients’ claims. (WSJ 3/11/13)

Workers & Retirees

Workers and retirees of companies targeted by plaintiff lawyers’ excessive litigation and specious claims may lose their jobs and pensions. Some 100 companies have declared bankruptcy from asbestos litigation. (Towers Watson 2013)

Future Asbestos Trust Claimants

As volumes of asbestos lawyers’ specious trust claims far exceed the projected number of legitimate claims, payments are reduced and future claimants get less. Payments currently average 15 percent of full claim value. (WSJ 3/11/13)

Businesses

Businesses are hindered by the burdensome legal costs imposed by asbestos lawyers’ fraudulent claims.

Consumers

When businesses are forced to pay excessive legal costs to combat asbestos lawyers’ specious claims, costs are passed on to consumers.

Investors

The economy and investors are harmed when companies are unfairly targeted and overrun by asbestos lawyers’ questionable claims.

Our Partners

The ACH authorisation form is a legal document that permits a business or organization

to take money out of a client's bank account without their knowledge. Usually, regular

payments like monthly subscriptions or utility bills are made using this method.

The consumer must provide the business access to their bank account details and

give permission for routine money withdrawals. The ACH permission form's terms and

conditions should be carefully read and comprehended before being signed.

Get the best templates on Lawrina.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE?

WHAT IS NEEDED

Fixing our broken asbestos claim process will take some combination of the following:

  • Greater transparency of trust claims and compensation processes
  • Clearer definitions and oversight to ensure claim filings are accurate and merit compensation
  • Accurate scientific evidence standards
  • Linking court venue to a claimant’s place of residency or workplace, or a business headquarters location
  • Prevention of fraud in “double dipping”— by requiring full disclosure of all claim filings lawyers have submitted for their clients
  • Laws to prevent dissimilar cases from being joined together in court
  • Rules to ensure all claimants are treated equitably and that financial resources go to deserving claimants
  • Federal oversight to ensure asbestos lawyers’ advertising is accurate and ethical
  • State and federal laws that close the doors on plaintiff lawyers’ abusive and fraudulent asbestos litigation and trust claims and ensure legitimate claimants are compensated
  • Judges who ensure that asbestos claims processes are legitimate and fair
  • Sanctions against lawyers who make fraudulent, unethical and contradictory asbestos claims

REFORM LEGISLATION

Some states, such as Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin have passed meaningful asbestos reforms, and many other have introduced reform bills. In 2013 the U.S. House passed the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act (FACT Act) but the U.S. Senate has not.