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Michigan senator wants to cozy up to corporations in asbestos cases

Date Posted: May 12 2006

LANSING - Congress has wrangled for years with creating a trust fund for victims of asbestos-related diseases, a group that includes tens of thousands of construction workers. Federal lawmakers have come close, but have so far been unable to agree on the amount of the trust fund and a way to determine who is sick enough to get the money.

Now Michigan lawmakers are taking up the matter. And according to a leading attorney in asbestos-related disease cases, state lawmakers would best serve the state by doing nothing.

Senate Bill 1123, introduced by Sen. Alan Cropsey (R-Dewitt), would establish detailed rules and regulations for asbestos and silicosis lawsuits that would require plaintiffs to demonstrate that they were actually injured by exposure to these substances. The bill establishes detailed regulations and standards for physicians involved in such suits, expert witnesses, compensation levels, caps on legal contingency fees, health impairment definitions, diagnoses, etc.

The bill prompted a written response on April 27 by Birmingham attorney Michael Serling to Cropsey, who is the chair of the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee. Serling also spoke before the panel.

"Senate Bill No. 1123 is not based on medical science and the standard of care in Michigan for the diagnosis of asbestos disease by physicians," Serling wrote. "It was written by the asbestos industry to place numerous arbitrary roadblocks for victims to traverse and is intended to disenfranchise 90 percent of asbestosis victims with real, irreversible asbestos disease and asbestos-induced lung cancer."

Serling said the Michigan bill was brought up by companies that produced asbestos-related products and the Chamber of Commerce after the U.S. Senate failed to come to terms on setting up a trust fund earlier this year.

"The primary reason why that federal bill failed," Serling wrote, "was that some of the asbestos industry members believed that they could go state to state, particularly in states with total Republican control, and lobby for even more onerous asbestos industry giveaway legislation like the present bill before your committee."

By a 58-41 vote, the U.S. Senate on Feb. 14 sidetracked the asbestos trust fund bill. Though most senators backed the measure, S. 852, it needed 60 votes to overcome objections by senators who, citing studies, said the $140 billion trust fund for asbestos victims would run out of money, forcing future funding from the U.S. Treasury.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said at the time that there is insufficient money in the fund, which would be established by companies and their insurers that created the asbestos-related products.

"The government," he said, "is obligated to pay regardless of the actual amount raised through company contributions... Experts conclude the amount will outpace the contributions to the fund not just in the near term but in the long term as well."

The trust would pay the medical bills to suffers of mesothelioma (a form of cancer), asbestosis and other asbestos-caused job diseases over 30-50 years. Construction workers have been hit particularly hard by asbestos-related diseases.

The asbestos legislation comes to roost in Michigan at a time when Republicans have been "among the leaders nationally in tort reform efforts," according to a blog of the Michigan Republican Party. Tort reform translates into reducing the ability of plaintiffs to file "frivolous" lawsuits against companies for damages brought on by companies.

Sherman Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association, recently told the Michigan House Tort Reform Committee, "As successful as you've been, it's important that you continue the positive trend," including the need to "address the growth in asbestos-related lawsuits, particularly those by people exposed to the material but not yet showing symptoms of disease," Joyce said. He maintained that instituting "liability reforms," makes Michigan a more attractive place to do business.

Contrast that point of view with a recent expose by Detroit's WXYZ-Channel 7 news, which shed light on a 1996 Republican-sponsored law that gives drug companies total immunity from lawsuits in Michigan when the drugs like Vioxx kill or harm people.. Michigan Republican leaders have refused to allow hearings on a bi-partisan plan to repeal the law.

WXYZ reported that the drug lobby was using its influence on House Republican leaders to stonewall the plan to repeal the 1996 law.

Attorneys blasted passage of that anti-consumer law in this publication a decade ago, just as Serling is doing with this state asbestos today.

Passage of the Michigan asbestos bill "will only deprive deserving Michigan victims of their day in court," Serling said, "and will further wreck untold burdens on a court system that was previously handling this complex litigation in an extremely efficient manner."