Asbestos Injury Payouts Reach $70 Billion

Companies have paid out an estimated $70 billion on about 730,000 asbestos personal injury claims, making them the most expensive type of litigation in U.S. history, according to the Rand Institute for Civil Justice.

More than 8,400 companies have been named as defendants in the lawsuits dating to the 1970s, involving almost every kind of industry, said Stephen Carroll, the senior economist who worked on the study.

The lawsuits had driven 66 companies into bankruptcy protection by the end of 2002, Carroll said. He said some companies may have been overlooked, because there was no master list of bankruptcies in the United States.