U.S. district court approves W.R. Grace’s reorganization plan

Quoted from http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/wrgrace-reorganization-idUSL4E8CV6X720120131

 

U.S. district court approves W.R. Grace’s reorganization plan

Tue Jan 31, 2012 10:52am EST

Jan 31 (Reuters) – W. R. Grace & Co said its reorganization plan has been approved by the U.S. district court of Delaware, clearing a major hurdle for the chemical and building products maker to emerge from its decade-long bankruptcy protection.

Grace filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2001, weighed down by asbestos-related claims. A bankruptcy court confirmed its reorganization plan exactly a year ago.

The reorganization plan calls for setting up two asbestos trusts to compensate personal injury claimants and property owners, Grace said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Company seeks asbestos liability limit in Idaho

Quoted from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46181670

Company seeks asbestos liability limit in Idaho

    By JOHN MILLER

    2012-01-29T17:13:02

BOISE, Idaho— A national bottle-top maker that’s grown weary of some $700 million in asbestos claims it’s paid out to victims of lung disease has arrived in the Idaho Legislature as part of its years-long, state-by-state trudge to shield itself from forking over more cash.

Pennsylvania-based Crown Holdings, whose products include the tops of soda pop and beer containers, has gotten help from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed conservative nonprofit, to broaden limits on asbestos claims against it stemming from an ill-fated acquisition nearly 50 years ago.

Together, they’ve succeeded in winning legislative protections in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

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Hugs caused cancer – claim

Quoted from http://www.lep.co.uk/news/health/hugs_caused_cancer_claim_1_4066420

Hugs caused cancer – claim

 

Published on Friday 16 December 2011

A dying woman who developed cancer after hugging her father as a child has launched a legal battle for £200,000 compensation.

Valerie Addison, 55, has contracted malignant mesothelioma, a cancer of the tissues surrounding her lungs, after hugging her father who worked with asbestos in Preston.

Now Mrs Addison, who has been given just months to live, is suing five companies for damages and says she has lost 34 years of life expectancy.

Deadly asbestos dust and fibres entered her body when she hugged her father Kenneth Wignall, when he wore clothes contaminated with asbestos.

He was not able to shower at work before coming home, and her mother handled, shook out, and washed his work clothes at home, she says. Mrs Addison says she was also driven by her father in his van, which contained lagging and asbestos materials.

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Mesothelioma victims take fight for compensation to the Supreme Court

Quoted from http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/12/06/mesothelioma-victims-take-fight-for-compensation-to-the-supreme-court-92534-29900776/

Mesothelioma victims take fight for compensation to the Supreme Court

A TEST case with major implications for asbestos-related cancer sufferers on Merseyside is now under way at the UK’s highest court of appeal.

Hundreds of victims of mesothelioma – Britain’s biggest industrial killer – are fighting the latest attempt by insurers to avoid paying compensation.

In arguably the most important test case ever heard about mesothelioma claims, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal by the Independent Insurance Company, who have refused to pay a Lancashire woman, Joan Eddleston, the compensation she was awarded by a judge many years ago.

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BBC News – Legislation due on asbestos-related pleural plaques

Quoted from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-16033887

Legislation due on asbestos-related pleural plaques

December 5, 2011

People suffering from the asbestos-related lung condition pleural plaques will be able to seek compensation from next week due to new legislation.

 

Finance Minister Sammy Wilson said the legislation to allow workers to pursue claims would become effective from 14 December.

The executive has already set aside £2.5m for claims.

The legislation reverses a House of Lords decision of 2007 which ruled victims could not claim compensation.

Similar legislation in Scotland was the subject of a long-running challenge initiated by insurers, which went before the UK Supreme Court.

On 12 October this year, the Supreme Court rejected the insurers’ claims that the legislation infringed their human rights and was outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament.

“The challenge to the corresponding legislation in Scotland cast a long shadow and I fought hard to get the Northern Ireland legislation through the assembly and submitted for royal assent,” Mr Wilson said.

“However, I always believed that the policy objectives of the act were just and fair and that belief has now been vindicated by the ruling of the UK Supreme Court in relation to the Scottish legislation.

“The 2011 act may be short and targeted, but it is a vitally important act, which seeks to ensure the continued availability of a method of redress for ordinary working men and women.”

Pleural plaques – small areas of benign scarring on the lungs- are not themselves a disease and have no symptoms, but the thickening of lung membranes is an indicator of past exposure to asbestos.

They signify an increased risk of developing the disease mesothelioma.

Letter to the Editor: U.S. Chamber ignores asbestos deaths

Quoted from http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202533426906&Letter_to_the_Editor_US_Chamber_ignores_asbestos_deaths&slreturn=1

Letter to the Editor: U.S. Chamber ignores asbestos deaths

The National Law Journal

November 28, 2011

In a recent op-ed, “Never-ending asbestos quagmire” [NLJ, Nov. 7], the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform really let its true colors show. While presenting baseless claims attacking the asbestos trust system to further protect its corporate financers, the Chamber fails to once mention the tens of thousands of Americans who have been killed by asbestos exposure.

Asbestos trusts were created by Congress to protect the interests of Americans suffering from asbestos exposure. The Chamber claims the trusts are both lacking transparency and rampant with fraud, yet a Government Accountability Office report released last month, commissioned by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) (most likely at the request of the Chamber itself), found the exact opposite, a stunning rebuke. From the 47 trusts that the GAO reviewed, all of their annual financial reports included the total amount of payments made by the trusts. Most included the total number of claims received and paid, while also having robust audit programs in place. Additionally, asbestos defendants can readily obtain additional information related to trusts or claimants through direct requests to the trust or by way of court-ordered subpoenas.

Asbestos-related diseases continue to kill 10,000 Americans each year, most within one or two years after diagnosis. Unbelievably, this poison is still legal in the United States. The Chamber’s opinion piece, failing to once mention the death and destruction caused by asbestos, made it painfully obvious where its allegiances lie — with corporations that continue to poison Americans and hope to never be held accountable for it.

Gary M. Paul
Washington

The writer is the president of the American Association for Justice.

Company appealing asbestos payout

Quoted from http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/11929189/company-appealing-asbestos-payout/

Company appealing asbestos payout

KATE CAMPBELL, The West Australian November 22, 2011, 5:35 pm

A mesothelioma sufferer awarded more than $2 million compensation after contracting the disease from playing in asbestos waste as a child is “very disappointed” the company deemed responsible has decided to appeal the ruling.

Supreme Court Justice Michael Corboy last month awarded Perth man Simon Lowes $2.07 million in damages after finding James Hardie had caused or significantly contributed to his cancer.

Mr Lowes, now a 42-year-old father of two, contracted mesothelioma after playing in asbestos waste dumped by James Hardie at the popular Castledare miniature railway site in Wilson in the early 1970s.

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Nurse exposed to deadly asbestos in hospital tunnels

Quoted from http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/Nurse-exposed-deadly-asbestos-hospital-tunnels/story-13712710-detail/story.html

Nurse exposed to deadly asbestos in hospital tunnels

Monday, October 31, 2011

Grimsby Telegraph


A NURSE who dedicated her life to helping others died from mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos lining the tunnels in the hospitals she trained in, an inquest heard.

Shirley Burns, 71, of Grimsby Road, Waltham, died in May at St Andrew’s Hospice, Grimsby, after doctors told her there was nothing they could do to help her beat the incurable lung disease.

  1.  

The district coroner for North East Lincolnshire, Paul Kelly, overruled consultant pathologist Dr William Peters who, following a post-mortem examination, said the mesothelioma was the “rare and spontaneous” result of natural causes.

Instead, Mr Kelly, said he believed it was the result of exposure to asbestos – and therefore industrially related – after hearing Mrs Burns worked in the London training hospitals.

Mr Kelly said: “In the past two or three weeks, the link coroners throughout the country keep in touch with has been quite active with reports of people suffering from mesothelioma and it being traced back to some of the London teaching hospitals – in particular, the tunnels the staff used.

“There is a proven link between asbestos used in these tunnels and later incidents of mesothelioma.”

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Cancer Victim Wins $2 Million Compensation from James Hardie

Quoted from http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/239138/20111028/asbestos-compensation-james-lowes-hardie-fund-castledare.htm

Cancer Victim Wins $2 Million Compensation from James Hardie

October 28, 2011 9:48 AM EST

A WA man has won $2 million in compensation from James Hardie after the Western Australian Supreme Court found the building materials company negligent in dumping asbestos that caused him to develop mesothelioma.

The award ordered on Wednesday ended 42-year-old Simon Lowes’s more than two years of legal battle with the James Hardie compensation fund, which denied responsibility for the cancer he developed for playing in an orphanage playground used as an asbestos dumpsite.

Judge Michael Corboy’s decision on Wednesday said James Hardie should have never dumped asbestos at the Christian Brothers’ orphanage at Castledare, where other children also played in a favorite miniature railway built from asbestos waste and inhaled asbestos dust.

Lowes was diagnosed in 2008 with mesothelioma, a fatal form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. He had undergone several surgeries, chemotherapy and medical tests.

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GAO Reports Shines Light on Secretive Asbestos Trusts

Quoted from http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202519467829&GAO_Reports_Shines_Light_on_Secretive_Asbestos_Trusts

GAO Reports Shines Light on Secretive Asbestos Trusts

Corporate Counsel

October 20, 2011



The Government Accountability
Office
released a new report on Wednesday analyzing asbestos injury trusts,
shining some light on a multi-billion-dollar system of plaintiff claims and
payouts that operates largely in secret.

The report, Asbestos
Injury Compensation: The Role and Administration of Asbestos Trusts [PDF]
,
reviewed 52 asbestos-related bankruptcy trusts that “have paid about 3.3 million
claims valued at about $17.5 billion.”

The GAO found that while the
majority of the trusts made general data available, very few provide detailed
information about their activities without being directed to by a court of law:
“Most asbestos trusts we reviewed publish for public review annual financial
reports and generally include total number of claims received and paid. 
Other information in the possession of a trust, such as an individual’s exposure
to asbestos, is generally not available to outside parties but may be obtained,
for example, in the course of litigation pursuant to a court-ordered
subpoena.”

[Article continues at original source]


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