Two of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the oil, gas, construction and engineering industries won court approval of a restructuring plan that allots a large chunk of money for asbestos-claims settlements, says Bloomberg.

Halliburton Co.’s DII Industries and Kellogg Brown & Root, which handles the engineering and construction services for Halliburton, were approved for a restructuring plan that includes a $4.2 billion settlement of asbestos claims.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Judith Fitzgerald of Pittsburgh approved the plan, along with the almost 400,000 claimants suing the company.

Most asbestos lawsuits against Halliburton stemmed from its 1998 $6.2 billion purchase of Dresser Industries, which was renamed DII, says Bloomberg.

An Illinois circuit judge facing scrutiny from pro-business and pro-industry groups handed over his docket, asking that his county’s asbestos lawsuits be handled by another judge, according to a recent article in the Belleville News-Democrat.

Nicholas Byron ruled the Madison County Circuit Court that handles the country’s largest asbestos docket for about 10 years. In 2003 alone, he presided over 953 such cases. As a result, Madison County is notorious for its plaintiff-friendly reputation.

A Texas judge has rejected requests by companies being sued for asbestos poisoning to create a separate docket dealing only with cases in which plaintiffs are sick. The companies wanted to delay all other cases until the victim developed asbestos-related sicknesses. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the delays would deny their clients constitutional access to the courts and a trial by jury.

This was reported by the Star-Telgram quoting a portion of Judge Davidson's findings: "At some point in the future, the number of cases filed which could qualify for assignment to an unimpaired docket could result in a denial of right to court access to other cases in which impairment is agreed to exist. It cannot be said that this is the case at this time for cases filed since Sept. 1, 2003."

It was also reported more than 600,000 asbestos-related lawsuits have been filed nationwide, many by people who have not developed symptoms of asbestos-related illness. About a third of those were filed in Texas.

The New York Times reports a federal appeals court ordered the judge overseeing five important asbestos-related bankruptcy proceedings to withdraw from three of the cases because of the appearance of bias. In a 2-to-1 decision, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia ordered Alfred M. Wolin, a federal district judge in Newark, to end his role in the bankruptcy hearings involving W. R. Grace, Owens Corning and U.S. Gypsum because his handling of the cases had the appearance of bias.

The Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram presented a heart moving story of another asbestos victim in Sunday's May 2 paper. The paper further reports school maintenance workers may be at increased risk for developing diseases related to prolonged exposure to asbestos.

Reading the story, your heart has to go out to this custodian worker:

As Randall Blevins was recovering from surgery, doctors told his wife that the patches indicated exposure to significant amounts of asbestos. Presumably, they said, the right lung was the same.

That was May 2002, 25 years after Blevins began working as a heating and air-conditioning technician for the Fort Worth school district. He fixed boilers and repaired pipes -- products often encased in asbestos.

Blevins, 50, believes that his lung disease stemmed from his work for the district because he knows of no other contact with asbestos dust.

From 1977, when he was hired, until about 1982, when the district stepped up its precautions, he handled asbestos without thinking. Blevins said he and the district's other boiler-room workers hit it with their wrenches and ripped it off pipes with their bare hands while crawling under buildings. Each time, the white shards cascaded into their hair, eyes, noses and mouths.

"We would handle asbestos like it was nothing," said Blevins, who lives in Southlake. "Might have on only paper masks."

Blevins said he appears to be the only one in his maintenance team who has been diagnosed with asbestos-related symptoms. But asbestos illnesses typically don't show up until decades later, and Blevins' illness gives some of his co-workers pause.

"I look at him and think, 'That could be me,' " said Arthur Cox, the district's heating and air-conditioning foreman.

The Associated Press reports the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that Owens Corning has no claim against tobacco companies over asbestos-related lung injuries. Owens Corning was trying to recover billions of dollars paid out in asbestos settlement cases by arguing the tobacco industry shared some of the blame for the health problems.

The Indiana case that went to trial this last week has settled per a report from the Indiana Gazette. The amounts paid in the settlements were not disclosed.

The Indiana Gazette reports a product-liability lawsuit filed by a dying retiree of the Fisher Scientific Co. almost four years ago has made its way to trial this week in the Indiana County Court.