Beaumont, Texas Personal Injury Law Blog - Ken Lewis

The story of American workers' exposure to asbestos products during the years from the 1940's to the early 1990's is one of our country's great workplace tragedies. So many workers (and some of their family members) developed asbestos-related diseases that thousands and thousands of lawsuits were filed in the last part of the 20th Century. Lawyers representing workers with minor asbestos disease were afraid not to file claims because of fear that statute of limitation deadlines for filing claims would be considered past. This caused lawyers representing potential claimants to file all potential claims. These tens of thousands of lawsuits resulted in many insurance companies exhausting their insurance coverage and forcing some of the suddenly uninsured asbestos product company defendants to seek bankruptcy court protection.
Recent changes in the laws of most of the states with the highest levels of workers with asbestos exposure and disease changed their laws to prevent recoveries for workers with minor asbestos disease. These changes took several forms, including simply preventing filing of lawsuits by such workers, putting those lawsuits behind all more serious disease claims, or parking those cases on inactive dockets until and if the diseases progressed to a more serious stage. States with such changes include Texas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio.
At the same time, these changes have resulted in cases of mesothelioma (a fatal disease caused only and exclusively by asbestos exposure), asbestos-caused cancer, and the most serious pulmonary cases of asbestosis being given streamlined treatment in litigation. The removal of the many thousands of minor asbestos injuries from the equation and the quicker movement toward trial settings have increased the average recoveries for mesothelioma, asbestos-induced cancer, and pulmonary asbestosis cases. At the same time, the number of actual mesothelioma cases are rising as the exposed workers age and more of the medical profession is becoming better at recognizing and diagnosing mesothelioma.
The number of asbestos manufacturers, suppliers, users, distributors, and insurers filing for bankruptcy because of exposure to asbestos lawsuits has decreased and many of these companies are coming out of bankruptcy as their bankruptcy plans are being approved by bankruptcy courts. Workers with serious asbestos injury claims can still often get significant recoveries.
Bush Lewis lawyers have been involved with asbestos cases since the early 1980's. We continue to review cases of mesothelioma, other asbestos-induced cancers and pulmonary asbestosis.