NU Online News Service, Oct. 20, 2:50 p.m.EDT

Corporate interests and the plaintiff's bar are using a newGovernment Accountability Office study on asbestos trusts to renewtheir battle over whether the trusts should be required to be morespecific in disclosing claims-settlement data.

The GAO report finds that from 1988 through 2010, asbestostrusts have paid about 3.3 million claims valued at about $17.5billion. The trusts paid 461,000 claims totaling $3 billion in2010, the report says.

The trusts were created after companies with huge numbers ofasbestos-related claims filed for bankruptcy, and throughbankruptcy deferred all of their asbestos liability into trusts.These companies, along with insurers, fund the trusts.

The trusts, according to the report, acknowledge that theycannot pay the full value of a claim and therefore determine apayment percentage, a fraction of the full value that can be paid,to present claimants in order to maintain sufficient assets forpresent and future claims.

The report studied 52 of the 60 trusts, and finds that only onepublicly disclosed the identity and claims of people it had paid.Most of the rest resist such disclosure, citing the confidentialityof claimant medical records.

The report was ordered by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman ofthe House Judiciary Committee at the request of the Chamber ofCommerce and other business interests.

The Chamber and business interests allege that plaintiff'slawyers largely oversee the operation of these trusts, and mandateprocess standards which prevent the trusts from sharing informationabout how much their clients have been paid. That, the Chambersays, leads to fraud.

But, the GAO report discounts the fraud allegation, saying mosttrusts appropriately audit claims. Specifically, the report says 98percent of the trusts it reviewed require a claims-auditprogram.  None indicated that these audits had identifiedcases of fraud.

The Chamber and business interests also allege that the secrecyallows some plaintiffs to hit up multiple trusts with claims thatmay contradict each other.

Lisa A. Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute forLegal Reform (ILR), says that the report "confirms that theasbestos trusts operate under a shroud of secrecy and withoutjudicial or federal government oversight."

Various initiatives have been taken to deal with the criticisms,one of which was a recent proposal brought by the ILR before theJudicial Conference of the United States, the primary policymakingbody of the U.S. courts.

This proposal is being considered this fall by the JudicialConference.

The proposal would require asbestos trusts to file publiclyavailable quarterly reports.

Reports submitted under this proposal would need to describeeach demand for payment the trust received during the reportingperiod, including an individual's asbestos-exposure history, aswell as each amount paid during the report period, but would notinclude confidential medical records or claimants' Social Securitynumbers.

Gary Paul, president of the American Association for Justice,the trade group representing the trial lawyers, says, in reactionto the report, "This GAO report shows that the U.S. Chamber and itsasbestos allies have severely misplaced priorities."

He says the ILR's insistence on a GAO study of this issue "hasbackfired, as it found that these trusts are transparent andprotect the interests of Americans suffering from asbestos-relateddiseases."

He adds, "The GAO has found what we knew all along: this attackon asbestos trusts is just the latest attempt to shield asbestosmanufacturers that knowingly killed their workers for decades."