Equitas Defends Asbestos Claim Process
By E.E. Mazier
NU Online News Service, June 11, 11:23 a.m. EST?An executive of Equitas, the London-based reinsurer for Lloyd's underwriters, defended the company's document requirements for asbestos-related claims as a sensible and effective way to regain control over skyrocketing costs.
In June last year, Equitas and a group of London insurers announced that they were requiring asbestos claimants to provide medical evidence of an asbestos-related injury and proof that a manufacturer or distributor of the asbestos was responsible for the injury.
Scott Moser, director of claims for Equitas, at a session held in conjunction with last week's National Association of Insurance Commissioners meeting in Philadelphia, declared that the document requirements "are not another ploy" by Equitas to avoid the paying valid claims.
Instead, he said, the goal of Equitas is to resolve claims "at the earliest practical time."
Mr. Moser's Asbestos Claims Briefing was sponsored by Chicago-based Peterson Consulting and Peterson Asbestos Claims Enterprise.
"The asbestos world has become so bizarre in the past decade that vast amounts of money have been paid to unhurt people" or to people who cannot identify the product or defendant responsible for an alleged asbestos-related ailment, Mr. Moser said.
He stressed that the Lloyds syndicates, "including the Equitas years," have paid $5 billion in the last five years, "more than any entity on Earth."
Mr. Moser described the document requirements as "simple" because they specify that to be reimbursable, asbestos claims must involve an actual asbestos-related injury and actual identification of the defendant whose product caused the injury.
He said that the requirements are the fundamentals of any tort claim, as well as the basics of paying claims: insurers pay valid claims and resist invalid claims.
In Mr. Moser's view, the fact that anyone would seriously question the documentation requirements is "a measure of how far off the path asbestos litigation has gone."
He also told the audience of insurers and attorneys that the document requirements are only prospective and that they do not prescribe rules for all cases because they have an "exquisite" exclusion provision.
In the year since the requirements were announced, "various people have taken shots at them," Mr. Moser said. But he added that no one has been able to cite a decision from the highest court of any state that is inconsistent with the Equitas requirements.
He said that claimants will appear perpetually if insurers keep paying even small amounts to people who are not hurt. "This has become an entrepreneurial enterprise," Mr. Moser said.
Moving on to another part of that "stand up and fight" strategy, Mr. Moser said that the "absolute worst thing to do" is for a defendant and its insurer to try an asbestos case without the commitment to take the case all the way on appeal.
A settlement hurts all insurers and defendant companies, he said, because it sets the stage for the payment of even more asbestos claims.
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