The Senate has taken a major step toward setting up a national fund to compensate people whose health has been ruined by asbestos, but the first and biggest beneficiaries of the plan may be companies such as Halliburton — the Texas oil services firm — which could save $3.5 billion of its pending liability for asbestos claims.
On a 10-8 vote last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent to the floor a business-backed plan to close the courts to all asbestos claims. Instead, the claims would be transferred to a newly created federal trust fund.
Over its 27-year life, the fund is supposed to have $108 billion to pay people who develop cancer or other health impairments from their exposure to asbestos in the workplace.
The money in the trust fund would come from about 8,500 companies that made or sold asbestos products directly or through their subsidiaries, as well as the companies' insurers. But most of the firms would pay no more than $25 million a year.
The arrangement could prove a windfall for Halliburton and its insurers.
Among the stinkers in this legislation is that it would limit reimbursement for other "cancers" caused by asbestos to $150,000, it would be a "no-fault" settlement which means it would be assessed through administrative law ( which although it CAN work also allows for the law to be enforced unequally by allowing whomever manages it to manipulate the REGULATIONS and call it a regulatory modification rather than a change in the law..which happens often with workers' compensation systems), the money being set aside isn't enough for the number of exposures that may turn into asbestos related diseases.LA Times
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