asbestos news

Martin & Jones has compiled the latest news on asbestos lawsuits and mesothelioma cancer. We hope you will find these resources helpful.

This page is updated frequently, so we encourage you to visit us often for up-to-date news on mesothelioma and our law firm's involvement in asbestos lawsuits.

A San Francisco jury last week awarded $10 million in punitive damages to a plaintiff who suffered from asbestosis and asbestos pleural disease.

The plaintiffs' $1.6 million in economic and noneconomic damages alone would make the jury's verdict the second-largest asbestosis award reported in California in the last two years to VerdictSearch, a verdict-tracking publication affiliated with The Recorder.

Rejecting a Union Carbide defense for the second time, a 4th District Court of Appeal panel ruled that bulk suppliers of asbestos are required to give the public adequate safety warnings—even if they don't sell asbestos directly to the public.

Late last month, a 4th District Court of Appeal panel unanimously overturned a Palm Beach Circuit judge who rule that the standard jury instructions for product liability lawsuits did not apply in an asbestos case against Houston-based Union Carbide.

Owens Corning, the world's largest maker of insulation products, said it will pay $5.2 billion to asbestos victims and $2.5 billion to creditors in a settlement that would let the company exit bankruptcy this year.

The settlement, if approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge, would create a company worth about $5.9 billion when it emerges from bankruptcy, including about $3.9 billion in new equity and $1.8 billion of new debt financing. The current stock will be cancelled. The payment to the victims would resolve more than $10 billion in asbestos-related claims.

Hillsborough doctor Bret Williams has dedicated his life to treating underserved populations, from tobacco farmers in Caswell County to indigenous populations in Bolivia. But the most difficult illness he's faced was his own.

The Duke University-trained physician learned in April 2003 that his chest pain was a symptom of mesothelioma, a disease known as the signature cancer of asbestos exposure because virtually nothing else causes it.

Asbestos deaths in the United States have skyrocketed since the late 1960s and will probably keep on climbing through the next decade because of long-ago exposure to the material, once widely used for insulation and fireproofing, the government said Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 1,493 people died from asbestos in 2000, compared with 77 in 1968.

What you've got are folks in their 60s and 70s who might otherwise live longer, but because of the damage to their lung tissue, it leads to an early death," said Forest Horne, a Raleigh, North Carolina lawyer who represents asbestos patients. "We're paying the price now for the use of this mineral in almost every construction insulation product used back in the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, all the way to the '70s."