Insurers Request Halt On Asbestos Action

By Steven Brostoff

NU Online News Service, Sept. 3, 4:10 p.m. EST, Washington?A coalition of insurance companies is asking the United States Supreme Court to bar state courts employing asbestos litigation procedures which, the coalition contends, contribute to the asbestos crisis now confronting the nation.

The group, called the Coalition for Asbestos Justice, has filed a petition with the high court asking it to review a West Virginia Supreme Court decision which joined thousands of unrelated asbestos cases into a single mass action.

"In such proceedings, as here, people with serious illnesses such as mesothelioma and lung cancer are lumped together with the unimpaired," the Washington-based Coalition said in its brief.

"The goal is to produce settlements with low transaction costs, even if it means trampling over the due process rights of defendants and the truly sick," the brief added.

"Efficiency is promoted over fairness and reason," the brief said.

In the case of Mobil Corp. and Honeywell International v. Adkins, a trial court judge in West Virginia grouped several thousand asbestos personal injury claims into a single action citing a West Virginia Trial Court Rule as authority.

Mobil and the other defendants asked the West Virginia Supreme Court to vacate the trial court's decision. They charged that the claims are unrelated and that consolidating them would deny the defendants their rights to due process and equal protection.

Mobil added that the trial court's decision was "arbitrary and capricious."

The West Virginia Supreme Court, however, upheld the trial court. Noting the mass of cases currently pending before the nation's courts, the West Virginia Supreme Court said that managing these cases cannot be accomplished unless the trial court is allowed significant flexibility and leeway.

It would have been better, the court said, if Congress had authorized the development of a compensation system for asbestos claims such as that for workers' compensation.

"Due to the lack of any such alternate recovery mechanism, however, the state and federal judiciaries throughout this country have been forced, by default, to accept the ?managerial nightmare' of dealing with, or being inundated by, an inestimable and seemingly endless number of asbestos cases," the court said.

But in its brief, the coalition said that this procedure, the obvious goal of which is to try to force a mass settlement, will only make matters worse.

It will encourage more filings by the unimpaired, the coalition said, jeopardize recoveries to the truly sick, result in additional bankruptcies, and lead to greater pressure on other defendants.

The United States Supreme Court, the coalition said, should send a clear signal to state courts that fairness and rationality must be restored to asbestos litigation.

Members of the Coalition for Asbestos Justice are ACE-USA, Chubb, CNA, Fireman's Fund, Hartford, Argonaut, General Cologne Re, Liberty Mutual, St. Paul and Great American.

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Insurers Request Halt On Asbestos Action

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