Posted on 08/31/2005 5:27:57 AM PDT by OESY
Back in June, federal Judge Janis Graham Jack disparaged nearly all of 10,000 claims for the rare lung disease as having been "manufactured for money." She also told the lawyers involved that federal prosecutors wanted access to the documents and X-rays surrounding this "fraud." So imagine Judge Jack's surprise to discover at a hearing last Monday that Houston attorney Scott Hooper -- one of several tort lawyers who brought the claims -- had removed more than 1,300 X-rays from a court depository. The judge had specifically denied Mr. Hooper's request to take the X-rays.
Ms. Jack told Mr. Hooper that if he did not have the documents back in her court by 5 p.m., he'd be found in contempt and would be "held in this courtroom until they are replaced."...
Judge Jack's pretrial hearings helped discover that nearly 70% of these claimants had previously filed an asbestos claim. Experts testifying in Judge Jack's court had made clear that it is extremely rare for a person to have both asbestosis and silicosis.
When Judge Jack brought this troubling fact up again in last week's hearing, Mr. Laminack shocked everyone by explaining that he doubts his clients ever had asbestosis. Put another way, so eager was Mr. Laminack to support the credibility of his silicosis claims that he admitted in federal court that he believed his clients had previously filed fraudulent asbestos claims. His admission is all the more notable because Mr. Laminack was indicting some of the lions of the asbestos bar -- Dickie Scruggs, for instance... were among those filing "Alexander" asbestos claims....
All of which is even more reason for Judge Jack, federal prosecutors and Congress to keep exposing the hundreds of thousands of sham asbestos and silicosis suits that are clogging U.S. courts.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I understand they lurk in that particular specialty....
Ditto.
As I kid we lived in a big old Chicago Greystone apartment building built around 1880-1890 with steam heat. All the pipes in the basement were naturally insulated with asbestos. We'd peel the stuff off an CHEW on it (tasted like paper).
And since 1970 I've been in the construction industry and have been 'exposed' to air borne asbestos particles about a gazillion times. And the field workers I worked with over those years about 97 giga-BILLION times, all with no ill effects from asbestos.
That sh*t is an eco and health nightmare. Get that 'stuff' on your clothes and you just better burn them. And breathing it, fugetaboutit, it'll stick to your lungs forever.
Money. It's all about money.
When they resort to pulling a Sandy Berger you know they are in deep doo-doo.
I saw that! The headline was "Jack the Ripper"! LOL! That judge is terrific!
"But billions were spent on eradicating the 'problem' and buildings were demolished for having asbestos (one of the best insulators)"
I seem to remember a 9/11-related post that advanced the theory that the WTC collapsed because the top dozen or more floors were built after asbestos was forbidden for use as an insulator; the claim, as I recall, was that the buildings either wouldn't have collapsed at all, or at least that it would have taken longer, perhaps enabling full evacuation, if the structural steel had been better protected from the heat of the fuel fires. Anyone else remember that?
Just wait until the lawyers decide to go after fiberglass. Katie bar the door!
Of course, federal law prohibited me from getting carpet over the tile because it was asbestos. I was screwed because of junk science and lawyers.
Soooo... Put down the glue on carpet pieces. You can make interesting patterns with them. Do it yourself. See Lowes....
The next big push is going to be benzene. I saw an ad on TV the other night soliciting clients with benzene exposure. This was by the same lawyer who has be running ads about asbestos for years.
Should be front page news? Right, but a search of the Houston Chronicle website shows nothing recent about asbestos.
"The rare lung disease" being discussed here, though, is silicosis, not asbestosis.
That should have been a key point in your post, don't you think?
And another thing... Didn't silicone breast implants prove to be harmless eventualy too???
That was a REAL tragedy
LOL!
(But what are the odds of that?)
You'd have a hard time explaining that to the hundreds of Johns-Manville employees who have died of mesothelioma, an extraordinarily rare form of cancer that only seems to afflict those exposed to asbestos.
What's going on in the courtroom, however, has nothing to do with actual asbestos-related dieases, and everything to do with lawyer-instigated fraud.
Thanks for the ping.
Another massive, lucrative, legal fraud.
I learned how to do the carpet myself and saved a few bucks. Screwwwwwwwwwwwwww them.
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