American Spectator on Asbestos Litigation:

Good piece in the March American Spectator on the asbestos mess. It doesn’t seem to be online. I am quoted as follows:

“Money attracts lawyers like bees to honey,” said David Bernstein, a George Mason University law professor who has written extensively on asbestos litigation. “In the absence of courts enforcing medical standards, the only risk to tort lawyers is what they pay for the photocopies. They just open up the file in their word processor and type in new names.”

“Just to respond to a case costs a company hundreds of dollars,” Bernstein continued. “If at all plausible, most companies would save money just paying even baseless claims off at $500 or even $2,000 apiece. And this breeds more of the same. For a single person filing a nuisance suit isn’t worth it. It’s too expensive. But you file 800 at once? 8,000? As long as the courts require so little actual evidence, the problem of asbestos litigation will continue to get worse.”

“One of the main problems with asbestos litigation is that in the early 80s, when there were a lot of plaintiffs who were quite obviously injured, many states adopted special rules for asbestos litigation that were much more liberal with regard to analysis and causation,” Bernstein said. “Now most asbestos claims are much less valid, but the liberal rules still apply. That’s why you see companies with a tenuous connection to asbestos being sued and plaintiffs not deserving of checks receiving a lot of money.”

George Mason University law professor David Bernstein said a real amelioration of the problem might not come until the visibility of the issue has been raised substantially.
“When the publicity gets intense enough, courts might examine these claims more rigorously and be more willing to throw out the frivolous claims of unimpaired plaintiffs,” Bernstein said. “Asbestos litigation might be less a question of judicial process than public opinion.”