St. Paul Travelers Gets Okay For Asbestos Settlement
By Arthur D. Postal
NU Online News Service, Aug. 18, 5:59 p.m. EDT?A New York bankruptcy judge has approved an agreement by St. Paul Travelers to pay $502.5 million to end a group of lawsuits that claimed the insurer used illegal practices to delay settling workplace asbestos injury claims.[@@]
The settlement, which was tentatively agreed to in November of last year, was approved by Judge Burton R. Lifland of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.
The suits alleged that Travelers violated state insurance unfair claim and trade practice laws while processing the claims.
The West Virginia lawsuit involved in the settlement alleged that insurers had acted "maliciously," using "fraud, deceit and outright lies," designing and orchestrating their claims settlement practices to "intentionally delay," and raising defenses that they knew would never succeed in order to settle claims for less money.
The disclosure of final settlement did not affect the stock price of St. Paul Travelers, according to one securities analyst, because the settlement funds came from reserves set aside by Travelers before the merger of the two companies.
According to St. Paul Travelers, the settlement ends all asbestos-related claims in Hawaii and "bars all future asbestos-related statutory direct actions against Travelers in West Virginia, Massachusetts and other states in which Travelers believes plaintiffs might try to bring such actions."
Specifically, the settlement calls for St. Paul Travelers to pay $445 million to settle the claims and an additional $57.5 million to pay legal fees.
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