Mesothelioma Law Caveats
Mesothelioma Law Caveats
Undeniably, there are a lot of loopholes in the mesothelioma law, or asbestos law, to be more precise. The American Bar Association issued a statement not that long back ago, arguing that the number of claimants who do not suffer from an asbestos induced disease, and actually may never will so, continues to rise year after year. And here is the underlying problem. The stature of limitations not only sets forth a regulation in relation to the time in which a claimant must come forward and file his compensation claim, but also allows individuals to file their claims pro-actively if they have reason to believe that they might get sick at a later point. So for example, if their chest X-rays indicates irregularities that are consistent with an asbestos disease, but can't be conclusively confirmed at this point, they are still eligible to file a claim.
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| Mesothelioma Law Caveats |
This situation resulted in a flood of claims that is now clogging up the courts and the system. Consequently, the seriously ill claimants won't get heard timely and have therefore to deal with significant delays. The ABA (American Bar Association) therefore issued a recommendation which basically says: we need a clearly defined standard or impairment. Furthermore, it suggests modifying the stature of limitations to only allow individuals that are evidentially ill to file their claims.
Every year, 10,000 people die from asbestos induced diseases in the United States. Nevertheless, there still is no ban or law that forbids the use of asbestos products.
Remarkably though, asbestos was one of the very first 'official' air pollutants (Clean Air Act, Section 112, 1970).
A study conducted 35 years later, demonstrated that approximately 1.5 million US employees are still exposed to this hazardous material, either at their jobs in the construction or building maintenance industry.
The situation was even brought to the attention of the Supreme Court. The Court was dealing with numerous cases related to asbestos since 1986. Two very large cases came before the Court in the late 90s; both were so called class action settlements and had the objective to limit liability. Ultimately, both settlements were rejected. The Court declared in its verdict that the settlements would exclude those claimants who could potentially develop an asbestos related disease at a later point.
This was obviously good news to mesothelioma victims and lawyers. The "Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2005" was addressed by the US congress. This bill suggested the installation of a trust found over $140 billion dollars to compensate victims of mesothelioma and other asbestos induced illnesses.
The Congress debated over two years on the bill and eventually voted it down. In my opinion, a reasonable and practical mesothelioma law is yet to be designed, implemented and enacted. There are still too many people either getting sick or dying because of exposure to asbestos.
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