Judges Move to Consolidate Asbestos Claims : Litigation: The goal is to clean up a legal morass and speed payments to victims of exposure to the hazardous material.
Two federal judges Friday attempted to end the legal chaos plaguing lawsuits filed by tens of thousands of asbestos victims around the country, ordering that the cases be consolidated into massive class actions.
The order was issued jointly by U.S. District Judges Robert M. Parker of Beaumont, Tex., and Thomas D. Lambros of Cleveland, after a sort of summit meeting in Washington with eight other federal district judges who have heavy asbestos caseloads.
Federal and state courts throughout the United States have been clogged by more than 89,000 lawsuits filed on behalf of people who acquired diseases such as asbestosis and lung cancer as a result of breathing asbestos fibers. The requirement until now to try the cases separately or in small numbers in most courts has resulted in years of delays and reduced chances for many victims’ claims to be paid before they die.
The mineral was widely used for decades in manufacturing, construction and shipbuilding because of its fire-resistant and insulating properties.
In their order, the judges said:
“The asbestos litigation has become the classic example of civil cases that cost too much and take too long. The Congress and the public expect the courts to bring some measure of efficiency to this litigation.”
The judges noted that under the current means of handling the cases, “trials have become repetitive, with the same issues and the same products being litigated time after time.”
In recent weeks, several judges, including Lambros, had taken steps to begin consolidation. But the judges decided to hold the extraordinary closed-door session in Washington on Friday to attempt to iron out jurisdictional disputes among themselves. Lawyers involved in asbestos litigation said it wasn’t immediately clear how the class actions will be established. But they said the order Friday essentially divides up the work of handling the class actions among three judges: Lambros, Parker and Jack B. Weinstein in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Legal experts said late Friday that it isn’t clear whether the effort to consolidate the cases will succeed. They note that there are many defendants involved--different companies that manufactured asbestos or products that used asbestos--and there are wide differences among the victims, including the extent of their injuries and the circumstances in which they were exposed to the mineral fiber. As a result, appeals courts may yet overturn the effort, since federal rules say that class actions may only be established for cases in which the facts are identical or nearly so.
But the bold step by the judges was hailed as an attempt to remedy what has been widely viewed as a failure by the court system to handle effectively the huge number of cases.
“The handling of the cases piecemeal has been such a dramatic failure that some sort of dramatic move of this sort, consolidating these cases, was really essential,” said Robert Rabin, a professor at Stanford University Law School who is an expert on mass lawsuits.
An attorney who has been closely involved in efforts to consolidate the cases, but who asked not to be named, asserted that the order “is the beginning of the end of the national asbestos nightmare.”
Lambros and Parker scheduled a hearing on the class actions for Sept. 14 in Cleveland.
Full details of how the class actions are to be set up weren’t immediately available. But one source with knowledge of the judges’ order said Parker will be in charge of certifying a class of federal cases involving a large number of asbestos manufacturers, and Lambros would handle attempts to settle both federal and state court cases. However, cases involving seven manufacturers, including Manville Corp., will be handled by Judge Weinstein.
Manville Corp., formerly one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of asbestos, filed for bankruptcy court protection in 1982 because of the huge number of claims pending against the company. Under a bankruptcy reorganization plan, Manville established a special trust to benefit asbestos victims. The trust recently ran out of cash, however, in part because far more claims have been filed than expected, and Weinstein is already trying to reorganize the trust and bring about a cash infusion.
