Last year, a jury found in favor of a U.S. Navy sailor's family awarding the family almost $6 million. However, a few weeks ago the Virginia State Supreme Court cut the jury's verdict in half to $2.83 million. It held that the jury should not have been allowed to award pain and suffering damages.

Robert Hardick was a former Navy petty officer and had been a shipfitter and machine repairperson for Navy ships. Due to working conditions on Navy ships that included breathing asbestos fibers for a couple decades, Mr. Hardick died after suffering from mesothelioma at 69 years old.

The VA Supreme Court cited the U.S. Supreme Court, where it stated that a "seaman" is a broadly used maritime term. One only needed to "contribute to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission." Thus, the VA Supreme Court held that the trial court erred by allowing the jury to award Hardick's family nonpecuniary damages for the wrongful death of Mr. Hardick.

Defendant John Crane Inc. expressed approval of this decision to vacate the pain and suffering and loss of society awards.

In today's Tri-City Herald, an article reported that the Department of Energy (DOE) is taking additional measures to protect Hanford workers from asbestos. It is heartening to see that the DOE responded to the many workers' questions and concerns about their safety in Central Hanford.  

This past Thursday, union officials and top Hanford officials communicated to all Hanford staff, explaining the steps that they have taken and will take to protect workers from additional asbestos exposure. Hanford employees had expressed worries over materials that containued asbestos but were not yet demolished during the environmental cleanup.

A number of the buildings at Hanford were built with asbestos laden materials pre 1976. Workers, however, voiced concerns about breathing in asbestos fibers that could cause cancer, lung diseases, and other serious illnesses that could go undetected for decades after exposure.

An article came out today in BuffaloNews.com about a story that could happen anywhere in this country.

Asbestos warning signs were posted recently at Marine Drive Apartments. No explanation was provided, which naturally caused a number of residents to wonder about their health and safety.

Housing Authority officials said a state mandate from the Office of Public Employee Safety and Health dictated when and where the signs were to be placed. The mandate did not allow time to inform residents before they went up.

Plans to hold a public informational meeting are in the works, they said.

“We’re not trying to inflame residents,” said Dawn E. Sanders, executive director of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority, which owns and manages the Marine Drive complex. “We didn’t have time before signs were put up to have a meeting with residents. The PESH report said we had to put up signs immediately, and that was the soonest we could have put them up. We didn’t randomly pick where to put them.”

The notices read, “Danger. Asbestos Cancer and Lung Disease Hazard. Authorized Personnel Only.” They were posted late last Friday afternoon at the elevators and the front and back doors of each of the seven buildings of the waterfront complex.

Problems began in August, when seven workers at Marine Drive removed asbestos around eight water valves to address a leaking problem. A state agency investigation determined that the employees had not followed proper rules for dealing with asbestos, and the Housing Authority was handed 17 citations. One of the required corrections involved posting asbestos-warning signs in specific areas.

The warnings also noted that confirmed or presumed asbestos- containing materials are present throughout the building, including floor tile, linoleum, plaster ceilings, heating pipes and all interior and exterior caulking.

The information had some residents worried about whether the affected areas included their individual units.

Only common areas, the boiler room and the maintenance room are affected, said Assistant Executive Director Modesto Candelario.

The good news is that most of the affected areas have already had abatement work done. Morever, residents will not have to be relocated, he added, because the abatement “won’t be done in their apartments.”

Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court heard oral argument in O'Neil v. Crane Co. How the CA Supreme Court decides the case will likely either expand or limit the duty of the product manufacturers to warn about the hazards of replacement parts that others made but that are then incorporated by the purchaser in the manufacturer's original product.

O'Neil is a case about a plaintiff's exposure to asbestos-containing gaskets and packing materials used in and around Crane Co's valves and pumps, which the Navy incorporated into the steam propulsion system aboard the USS Oriskany. The plaintiff had served on the Oriskany while he was enlisted.

Though the pumps and valves delivered to the Navy originally incorporated asbestos-containing gaskets and packing, all parties agreed that by the time plaintiff served aboard the Oriskany, the original asbestos packing and gaskets had been removed and replaced with packing and gaskets manufactured by third parties. Nevertheless, the plaintiff argued the pump and valve manufacturers had a duty to warn him regarding the hazards of asbestos. 

The Court did not appear to sit well with the proposition that the pumps and valves could be deemed defectively designed if the pumps and valves were “asbestos neutral,” and could function just as well in other systems utilizing non-asbestos containing materials.

This may be a large focus for the court with regard to assigning a duty to warn about replacement parts made by others only if the replacement part is identical to the original hazardous part, and the replacement part is essential to the function of the defendant’s product. We await the decision, which will come out in about two and a half months from today.

Travelers Insurance Company (TRV.N) put 25 percent more into its asbestos claim reserves this year than it did last year. It's the latest large insurance company that has indicated that problems stemming from asbestos issues are worsening. The company recently announced that is involved in more litigation and significant payouts connected to asbestos related injuries.

However, although such claims are on the rise, the medical community reassures that the actual incidence of asbestos related illnesses, such as mesothelioma, are declining. For cases that emerge, doctors opt for more aggressive treatment, which contributes to rising costs for insurers.

Asbestos was at one point a popular insulating material, but is now known to cause severe lung diseases. Claimants say that insurers such as MetLife knew about the harmful effects of asbestos as long back as the 1920s. Yet insurance companies continue to deny any such knowledge about asbestos.

Numerous insurers, including Lloyd's of London, almost experienced financial ruin due to asbestos claims. Despite the avoidance of asbestos for new construction since the 70's, victims of asbestos exposure often do not learn about their illness for at least 30 years. 

According to A.M. Best, a ratings agency, the industry faces roughly $75 billion in exposure to asbestos claims, suggesting that some insurers are still not fully reserved for claims that they may inevitably face.

Dennis Kavanaugh worked as a carpenter for more than 30 years, often coming home covered in a snow-like dust — breathing it in, spitting it out — that would kill him slowly, bit by bit for the rest of his life, says an article in the Palm Beach Post.

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The government-funded group determined that in 1968, 77 people died from asbestos, compared with the 1,500 people who died from it in 2000 -- almost a 2,000 percent increase.

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Travelers Property Casualty Corp.’s proposal to pay $500 million to victims of asbestos-related diseases is on its way to becoming a reality after a judge said the settlement amount is acceptable, says Bloomberg News.

If all goes as planned, the the pact would be one of the largest settlements in asbestos-legislation history, the article says. Travelers insured the Johns-Manville Corp. (which no longer exists) for more than 30 years while it produced and sold asbestos.

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Soon after Sept. 11, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was quick to assure New Yorkers the air they were breathing — even with the still-prevalant poisonous gas and dust — was safe. An internal investigation later found that the White House Council on Environmental Quality “convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones,” says an article published by Inter Press News Services.

During a short time after the Trade Center attacks, the EPA helped clean and test about 4,000 apartments in the area, but tens of thousands of other sites have yet to be officially checked for toxins such as asbestos, mercury and lead.

According to Mount Sinai’s occupational health clinic’s most recent figures, about half of the 9,000 rescue and recovery workers still suffer from respiratory problems.

In March, a group of recovery workers and downtown residents sued the EPA to demand further testing and cleanup, as well as the creation of a fund to pay for medical monitoring of affected people.

A woman who lived one and a half blocks from Ground Zero says she had her home tested and found relatively high levels of fiberglass, asbestos and other toxins. She claims that on the day of the attacks, “thick gray dust mixed with burnt papers pervaded the apartment though open windows.” As a result, she contracted a rash on her face and had severe headaches, sinus problems and a deep cough, she says.

Recently, two Congress members proposed expanding federal health insurance to downtown residents and workers to cover their physical and psychological treatment and the cost of prescription medications. And the bill would increase the number of people being monitored from 12,000 to 40,000.

Paul Brodeur, staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, has been writing about environmental problems for 36 years. Talking in Missoula, Montana on Friday April 30 The Missoulian reported he had some harsh words for the government and big business:

"Industry always lies; the government rarely tells the truth."

For Brodeur, that has resonated through his years of reporting on workers exposed to and killed by asbestos. For decades, he said, businesses that knew the substance would kill people working for them hid that knowledge from the workers, their families and the public.

That deceit is built into the corporate structure, he said.

"It is the private enterprise system as presently constituted," he said.

It's up to the press to tell the story of asbestos and other byproducts of human industry that are polluting the air, water and land - over and over and over - to keep it in the open, said Brodeur and others at a press conference at the Missoula Art Museum, beginning a weekend of events about asbestos and its lethal effects on the towns where it is mined and turned into products, including Libby.

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The Palm Beach Post reports that more than 730,000 asbestos claims costing more than $70 billion have already made their way through Palm Beach County, and some lawyers are only encouraging the free-for-all.

They are advertising at as a safe haven for all wayward — and not so wayward — asbestos claims. Which leads many to believe South Florida needs a dose of legislation reform.

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The decision upholds a lower court ruling that barred about 2,000 former railway workers from adding manufacturers to their separate lawsuits against nearly 60 companies that made, sold or used asbestos, according to the Associated Press. The workers say they were exposed to the substance while working in or maintaining rail cars.

The decision wasn’t a comment on the validity of the workers’ claims, but the justices said, “claims against locomotive manufacturers are wholly futile.” In making the decision, the justices cited the Federal Locomotive Boiler Inspection Act, saying it pre-empts state-law tort claims against railroad manufacturers.

They also said trial courts have great discretion in deciding whether to add new defendants to an existing lawsuit. A plaintiff challenging the use of that discretion must show the decision was “unreasonable, arbitrary or unconscionable.”

Disagreeing, one justice said the claims were not in danger of intruding into federal domain because they dealt with products no longer used, not current railroad equipment.

More than 40,000 cases are pending by Ohioans exposed to asbestos.

The law, which likely will take effect in early September, makes Ohio the first state to establish a medical threshold plaintiffs must meet to sustain a suit against firms that mine sand and quartz or make the safety equipment for sand blasters, glass makers and other workers.

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But a new type of treatment has been introduced to the mix. Photodynamic therapy uses light to kill cancerous cells after a drug is administered intravenously to target and render the cells more sensitive, says a press release put out by PRWeb.

The drug has no affect on normal cells, so no additional harm will be done. After cells have been properly exposed, a special frequency of light laser beams are directed toward the mesothelioma. Although there have been cases of eye irritability and nausea, side effects have been minimal.

For more information, visit the Mesothelioma Help Web site.

The Harford Courant has an excellent article covering the personal side of things as well as the heavy lobbying taking place regarding the pending asbestos legislation bottled up in the U.S. Senate.

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The families of this wooded subdivision say that when they moved in they didn't know the developer had buried tons of asbestos-laden debris here and left more on their land.

Broken pieces of tile, siding and roofing that contain asbestos -- as big as a hand or as small as a dime -- push up through the frost-cracked ground and mingle with the dirt.

"We thought we had found our house in paradise," said Richard Gibson, who with his wife, Susan, lives in a home once valued at $193,200. "We put all of our chips in. Now it's worth nothing."

A cavalcade of agencies through the years discovered problems at North Ridge Estates, but it didn't make a difference.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality failed to police the developer despite concerns about asbestos disposal practices at the site nearly 25 years ago. Two other agencies -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Klamath County -- failed to draw attention to potential problems at the site.

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Griffin B. Bell, a former US attorney general said places such as Madison County, which has a growing reputation for large judgments against defendants, bring a "stain on our system."

Bell was taken by Plaintiff's trial lawyers who noted Bell works at a law firm whose clients include asbestos defendants. They accused Bell of shilling for corporate America.

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