Case Evaluation

The Asbestos Story: The Asbestos Story - Asbestos Industry Concerns Increase

Part 4: Asbestos Industry Concerns Increase

The Asbestos Story: America's Greatest Industrial Tragedy
A Tale of Deceit, Design & Temerity
By Christopher M. Placitella
Cohen, Placitella & Roth, P.C.

The Asbestos industry becomes increasingly concerned about cases like those Manville just secretly settled. For traumatic injuries caused by accidents like slip and falls, the employers are immune from lawsuits.

Workers' compensation is the only remedy. With respect to occupational diseases such as Asbestosis and silicosis, in most states, employers are not protected by workers' compensation laws. A jury decides such cases.

As a result, the industry calls a meeting to discuss among other things the problem of lawsuits that will continue to be filed against industry members for Asbestos and silica related diseases. The captains of industry meet at the University Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The plan arrived at includes the establishment of an industry organization later to become known as the Air Hygiene Foundation.

Publicly, the stated purpose of the Air Hygiene Foundation is to promote worker health and safety. The private agenda of the organizers, however, includes lobbying for legislation to take from the workers their right to a trial by jury and to assist in the defense of lawsuits and claims. In this regard, at the 1935 University Club meeting, industry lawyer Alfred Hirth states:

The shyster lawyer will forment litigation only as long as he will receive a substantial portion of the recovery. As long as his fee becomes a negligible quantity, then, and only then will his interest cease.. What is even more important than the advantages upon which I have briefly commented is the elimination of lay juries from cases of this kind.

While industry works to eradicate the worker's right to bring lawsuits, privately industry members admit that the very rights they seek to take away are responsible for making working conditions much safer. Accordingly, the President of American Brake Shoe acknowledges:

The year was 1933.. Returning from a plant visiting trip to the Pacific Coast, a telegram was handed me in Omaha. It read 'Silicosis suits totaling $2,700,000.' For a while I comforted myself with the racket angle. During the next few months we did not enjoy the lawsuits. It was a racket, but plant conditions were far from right. Today I know these suits were one of the of the best things that could have happened to Brake Shoe. I don't believe this story of final full awakening is unique with us. I fear it is typical. Without question ethical and unethical lawyers have helped clean up a lot more plants than we enjoy giving them credit for.

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