Skip to main content

Asbestos bill revived; should been left for dead?

Date Posted: June 23 2006

By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Saying the ongoing cost of asbestos claims must be resolved, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has revived and rewritten his controversial asbestos trust fund bill.

But this version, S. 3274, is considerably worse than the one the Senate sidetracked earlier in 2006 due to budget-busting concerns, asbestos victims say.

That's because the bill makes it harder for ill and dying workers to get paid from the proposed $140 billion trust fund, which victims note is inadequate. Specter's committee held a June 7 hearing on S. 3274.

Specter said this version of the bill is "the last best chance" for passage by his Senate Judiciary Committee.

The victims said Specter's new bill caps the money paid to terminally ill victims - those with fewer than 12 months to live - and gives asbestos makers and their insurers no incentive at all to bargain and every incentive to force the victims to take less.

Specter himself, introducing S. 3274 on April 25, pledged no federal funds would be available for victims should the trust fund, which asbestos manufacturers and their insurers would supply, run out of money. And, like the previous trust fund bill, the new legislation bars victims from going to court and throws out pending victims' cases.

Specter said the new asbestos bill address objections from two senators, both of whom want to place more burden of proof of illness on victims. The new bill would require victims to provide a diagnosis from a doctor "treating" rather than "examining" the asbestos patient. It would also require credible affidavits - and random audits of those documents - as proof of asbestos exposure.

The new asbestos bill is the latest chapter in the long congressional wrestling - sometimes with labor participation but recently without it - about what to do about the 200,000-plus workers who suffer from asbestosis, mesothelioma and other grave or fatal illnesses caused by inhaling asbestos fibers on the job.

Those workers, including construction workers, contracted those illnesses due to repeated exposure to asbestos, which got into and lodged in their lungs.

Many sued the firms that employed them, because those companies did not warn them of asbestos hazards or prevent the illnesses, even though company studies show some firms knew of asbestos hazards as far back as World War I.

The suits drove several former makers of asbestos into bankruptcy. So Specter started out in congressional-labor-business negotiations to try to craft a solution. But the biggest asbestos
manufacturers, aided by lobbying by colleagues of convicted GOP kingpin lobbyist/felon Jack Abramoff, hijacked the asbestos bill almost two years ago, and rewrote it in their favor.

The AFL-CIO then walked away from the bargaining, saying victims had been double-crossed and were left with too little money and no way to get more or go to court for themselves. Both the federation and victims groups opposed it - and still do.

"Letting the corporations bounce back from bankruptcy with a slap on the wrist with this trust fund takes imperfection to new levels," said Susan Vento, chair of the Committee
to Protect Mesothelioma Victims, one of several asbestos victims' groups campaigning against the industry-pushed legislation.

Vento testified June 7 that the new asbestos bill "changed the expedited settlement process for the terminally ill victims in a manner that prevents these victims from receiving the full compensation due to them." She said the provision allows defendant firms substantial leverage to force victims into accepting much lower awards if they desire to be compensated before dying

"This trust fund is 'no-accountability' heaven for corporations," she said. "Even Enron would be jealous."

As we reported in our last issue, Republican lawmakers in Michigan are trying to take up where federal lawmakers have left off, introducing legislation to make it more difficult for workers potentially afflicted with asbestos-related disease to get monetary relief.

In addition, the State Supreme Court is considering raising the legal standard by which asbestos victims can make a claim in the judicial system.

One lawyer who supports asbestos victims said Republican lawmakers and the Michigan Supreme Court are attempting to fix problems that don't exist.