Supreme Court to Consider Asbestos Suit
In a case likely to set new rules governing huge class-action lawsuits, the Supreme Court announced Friday that it will consider reviving a $1.3-billion class-action settlement for people suffering from asbestos-related illnesses.
The high court said that it will take up a settlement, struck down by the U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia in May, that would resolve the maze of lawsuits pending against manufacturers of asbestos products but that would also be binding on anyone who comes down with asbestos-related afflictions in the future.
The outcome is likely to affect all future class-action lawsuits. In recent years, products ranging from silicon breast implants, General Motors pickup trucks and life insurance that was sold through misleading claims have set off damage suits across the country.
But none matches asbestos. Widely used for insulation and brake linings before 1970, asbestos fibers can be deadly when inhaled. At least 150,000 claims involving asbestos-related cancers and other lung diseases are pending in courts now and 50,000 new claims were said to have been filed in the last year.
Not surprisingly, the manufacturers want to settle the claims as quickly as possible and move on.
A group known as the Center for Claims Resolution, sponsored by 20 manufacturers of asbestos products, negotiated a 1993 settlement with several plaintiffs’ lawyers. It would pay between $37,000 and $67,000 for persons who came down with mesothelioma, a rare and deadly lung cancer caused by asbestos fibers. This amount is far less than victims have won through lawsuits, but the proponents of the class-action settlement said that it would benefit victims by ensuring claims were paid without the cost and delay of litigation.
Some experts who studied the settlement disagreed.
“It was a very bad deal,” said Columbia University law professor John Coffee Jr., who testified against the settlement. “These people would get a small fraction of what they could get in court.”
The U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia rejected the settlement as unfair, not just to current plaintiffs but to the many more who may come down with asbestos-related disease in the future. These persons would be limited to the terms of the settlement and would be blocked from suing on their own.
The case (Amchem Products vs. Windsor, 96-270) highlights a growing battle between company lawyers and consumer advocates over how to handle class-action litigation.
Usually, company lawyers say that a single class-action settlement is the best way to resolve thousands of individual cases quickly and efficiently. But lawyers for Ralph Nader’s law firm, Public Citizen, say that corporations are abusing this idea by arranging cheap, quick settlements that bind thousands of victims to a bad deal.
