NU Online News Service, Dec. 4, 3:25 p.m. EST
Abuses in medical procedures are largely responsible for the collapse of silica litigation that tailed off just a couple of years after an explosion of cases in 2001, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
RAND noted that litigation over injuries caused by breathing respirable silica dust skyrocketed in 2001, raising concerns that silica litigation could become a mass tort with similarities to the asbestos litigation of the previous 30 years.
But according to the study, "The Abuse of Medical Diagnostic Practices in Mass Litigation, The Case of Silica," the litigation essentially ended two years later.
"In 2003," noted the study, "more than 10,000 claims–about 100 cases against 250 defendants–were aggregated in the Southern District of Texas before U.S. District Court Judge Janis Graham Jack to determine whether the federal courts had jurisdiction based on diversity. The proceeding in Judge Jack's court exposed gross abuses in the diagnosing of silica-related injuries, and due in large part to her findings, the litigation collapsed."
Judge Jack issued a discovery order that required each plaintiff to submit a sworn fact sheet regarding the plaintiff's diagnosis. "The fact sheets revealed that more than 9,000 plaintiffs were diagnosed by only 12 doctors and that a substantial fraction of the plaintiffs in the silica multidistrict litigation (MDL) had earlier filed claims for asbestos-related injuries," the study explained.
It added, "At the hearing, Judge Jack questioned representatives from each of two medical screening companies and several diagnosing doctors. She concluded that virtually all of the diagnoses failed to satisfy the minimum, medically acceptable criteria for the diagnosis of silicosis."
While Judge Jack remanded all but one case to state court, citing lack of jurisdiction, the study states that the order questioned validity of almost all the claims, and plaintiffs' firms voluntarily dismissed the bulk of the silica claims remanded to state courts in Texas and Mississippi.
Additionally, the study noted, "The court criticized the procedures used by the doctors who had diagnosed the vast majority of the plaintiffs and ordered sanctions against the plaintiffs' firm for the case for which she retained jurisdiction, finding that its behavior had been unreasonable and vexatious."
According to the study, legal reforms also contributed to the decline in silica claims, "but [Judge] Jack's findings were undoubtedly a driving factor in the end of silica as a mass tort."
For more information about the study, visit www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR774/.
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