Asbestos Reform Bill Passes Texas Senate

By Steve Tuckey

NU Online News Service, April 28, 4:10 p.m. EDT?The Texas Senate unanimously approved a comprehensive asbestos and silica lawsuit reform bill yesterday that the property-casualty insurance industry had lobbied for.[@@]

Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Galveston, called the measure, which now goes to the Texas House of Representatives, the result of "ten years of searching for a balanced and bipartisan solution to the increasing number of asbestos lawsuits clogging the state's courts."

"It is going to protect those workers that have been impaired, and we are going to protect those workers who have been exposed but have not yet been impaired," Sen. Janek continued.

According to Sen. Janek, SB 15 would eliminate the statute of limitations, allowing anyone who is exposed to asbestos or silica the right to sue when and if an actual illness develops. Another bill provision requires claimants to demonstrate actual impairment before filing a claim.

"This is an effort to reduce the backlog of asbestos and silica lawsuits filling the Texas courts," Sen. Janek said.

"Texas is taking an important step forward in achieving meaningful asbestos litigation reform," said Joe Woods, southwest regional manager for the Des Plaines, Ill.-based Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI).

Robert Detlefsen, public policy director for the Indianapolis-based National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, said the legislation will help prevent Texas businessmen from "frivolous lawsuits."

The measure also requires that each asbestos case be tried on its own merits, and not as part of a "bundle" of claims that may include a few truly sick claimants and dozens of unimpaired claimants. "This change will also assure that compensation that should go to the truly sick is not diverted to pay claimants with no asbestos or silica-related illness," Mr. Detlefsen said.

The legislation also shuts down the so-called "mass screening" of potential asbestos and silica claimants that have resulted in tens of thousands of unimpaired asbestos claims in the courts, he added.

The bill will face a hearing before the House Civil Practices Committee next week. "The House has always been more pro-trial lawyer, so it faces a more difficult path," Mr. Woods said. "But in the end we expected to pass."

Both chambers are Republican-controlled.

GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who made the legislation one of his top priorities in his State of the State address earlier this year, is expected to sign the bill, Mr. Woods said.

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Asbestos Reform Bill Passes Texas Senate

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