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Understanding Current Theories of Liability and Proposed Legislation to Protect Your Client
YOUR client has never manufactured asbestos-containing products and remains untouched by the devastating waves of asbestos litigation that have reduced financially stable companies to empty shells. Do not allow yourself or your client to become complacent. The turbulent waters of asbestos litigation have seeped into virtually every type of economic activity in our country. Defense attorneys are striving to protect their clients from the perils attendant to the most enduring mass tort litigation recorded in the annals of American jurisprudence - a marathon that has yet to reach full stride.
On September 25, 2002, the Rand Institute for Civil Justice released an Interim Report ("Rand Report") estimating that only twenty to fifty percent of the total potential asbestos-related personal injury claims were filed and that defendants and insurers faced approximately $145 to $210 billion in future asbestos litigation costs.3 Last year, Stephen Carroll, the senior economist who authored the Rand Report, estimated that defendants had already paid $70 billion on 730,000 claims, making asbestos litigation the most expensive mass tort in American history.4 In 2003, plaintiffs filed approximately 110,000 asbestos claims-the most ever filed in one year.5 As a growing number of traditional asbestos defendants are forced to seek bankruptcy protection from their massive litigation expenses, counsel for plaintiffs are increasingly adding nontraditional defendants to the fray. The Rand Report identified a predictable, yet alarming trend - a rapid growth in the volume of claims by workers allegedly exposed to asbestos in industries that had not been targeted in the past.6 Indeed, the number of claims filed annually against this new class of defendants has grown so swiftly that by 2002, it was already equivalent to the number of claims filed annually against traditional defendants.
Plaintiffs' attorneys have been filing cases for years against premises owners in the ship construction and petrochemical industries where the heavy use of asbestoscontaining products, especially insulation, was integral to those industries' operations. But now, owners and operators of virtually any industrial facility constructed prior to the mid-1970s are potential targets. Premises liability claimants are typically former employees of outside contractors who sue the owners of the facilities where they performed their work.8 In Texas, the representatives...