Owens Corning Fails to Block Some Blacks From Asbestos Suit

A judge denied a request by Owens Corning on Thursday to bar some blacks from suing the former asbestos manufacturer, which had argued that blacks have less lung capacity than whites.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan’s ruling reversed a guideline he wrote in 1992 about who was eligible to sue for damage to their lungs.

The plaintiffs, many of them former steelworkers and shipyard workers, are trying to prove they have diminished lung capacity because of their exposure to asbestos.

The company argued that because blacks score consistently lower on tests used to determine lung capacity, they should have to meet a higher standard to prove asbestos caused lung damage.

But after hearing testimony from medical experts on both sides Thursday, Kaplan decided that there was no reason to use different medical standards for whites and blacks.

Owens Corning, a Toledo, Ohio-based company that makes fiberglass, stopped manufacturing products containing asbestos in 1972. Since then, the company has been hit with hundreds of thousands of lawsuits from people who worked with products containing asbestos and developed a lung disease called asbestosis.

In December, the company announced a $1.2-billion settlement of about 176,000 cases.

In 1992, Kaplan set guidelines to handle 12,000 asbestos cases filed in Baltimore alone. He wrote then that lung test results “shall be corrected for race or ethnic origin as appropriate.”

Plaintiffs attorney Peter T. Nicholl said that, out of more than 20 asbestos makers being sued in Baltimore, Owens Corning is the only one to raise the racial standard as a means of excluding defendants.

According to a 1991 report by the American Thoracic Society, the medical branch of the American Lung Assn., blacks consistently score lower on pulmonary function tests.