Bush victory fuels hope for deal on asbestos

Business leaders in Washington are preparing to meet as soon as next month to negotiate terms of a revised legal settlement that could finally end decades of asbestos litigation.


Despite struggling to agree details of a $140bn (£75bn) trust fund for victims in the last Congress, lobbyists are increasingly confident that Republican gains in the Senate will allow the passage of a new bill next year. The US asbestos crisis has caused billions of dollars of losses for London insurers and European manufacturers with US subsidiaries.

The new optimism was fuelled yesterday by President George W. Bush, who said this kind of legal, or tort, reform would be one of his first priorities.

Michael Baroody of the National Association of Manufacturers said: "It's a very different world. It does not make this simple, but it makes it possible."

A bigger Senate Republican majority should help overcome resistance from Democrats who feared undermining rights of people exposed to asbestos.
.........
The NAM said a key factor was the departure of Tom Daschle, Senate minority leader, an advocate for the interests of asbestos trial lawyers.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/73b75760-2f81-11d9-984e-00000e2511c8.html

http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/feeds/ap/2004/07/17/ap1460258.html

Halliburton Co. has won court approval for its $4.2 billion plan for settling asbestos-related health claims and a judge's signature on Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring plans for several of its key business units.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Judith Fitzgerald's action is one of the final hurdles before the subsidiaries, including KBR and DII Industries, can emerge from bankruptcy. They still must fund a trust, using cash, stock and notes, that will be used to pay future claims.

KBR and DII Industries filed for bankruptcy protection in December to deal with claims by about 400,000 people who said they were injured by asbestos exposure.

more at link......

Let those responsible for killing people with their poisonous product off the hook and blame those who are dying for abusing the system. Yep, sounds like good morals to me.

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/9/12/192330/380>
WR Grace Asbestos containing insulation was used at the World Trade Center (WTC). James Cintani stated that Grace Vermiculite did not contain asbestos. Unfortunately this was not true this material was 2-5 percent asbestos. 100,000 80 pound bags of this vermiculite was used in the WTC. In addition 9,150 pounds of MonoKote 3 was used at the WTC. Monokote 3 was about 20 percent asbestos. Therefore in total about 201,183 pounds of pure asbestos fiber from Grace was used in the WTC.


Indeed, "Asbestos Safety" and its political, economic, and social implications do get a bit more complicated.
As Patty Murray continued her effort on Asbestos safety after being attacked for her "treasonous" comments made to a group of school kids regarding OBL's social standing among Arabs, later to be debunked those who may have had some insight into WR Grace's policy and procedure would have been called to the witness stand, but.....as the wheels of fortuna would have it they died in a plane crash in N. Carolina in Jan. 2003.


More on the destination of the three W.R. Grace & Co. victims
From: <http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/01/08/2003010834140.htm>
Crash ends promising lives in an instant
By Liv Osby
HEALTH WRITER
losby@greenvillenews.com <mailto:losby@greenvillenews.com>
Many were just starting their lives, like the two Clemson University graduate students, the Bob Jones University co-ed and the young father traveling with his adolescent daughter. Others, including the North Carolina computer salesman with two small children at home and three employees of W.R. Grace & Co., were just making a living when their US Airways plane flipped, crashed and burst into flames moments after takeoff Wednesday morning from Charlotte.
W.R. Grace & Co. veteran Richard Lyons was global health and safety manager at Grace Performance Chemicals in Cambridge, Mass. Lyons, 56, joined the company in 1969. Married with two children, he lived in Lynnfield, Mass.
Joseph Spiak, 46, also worked at the Cambridge site as general manager for specialty vermiculite (note: this includes the highly toxic, widely distributed brand of asbestos contaminated vermiculite marketed under the W.R. Grace brand name of Zonolite). A resident of Acton, Mass., he had been with Grace since 1981 and occasionally visited its Spartanburg facilities. He was married with two children.
Paul Stidham was a newcomer to the company, joining last July as director of environment health and safety for Grace's corporate headquarters in Columbia, Md. He and his wife, Dora, and their two young children made their home in Howard County, Va.
All three were on their way to a Grace mining plant in Enoree, S.C. "We are devastated and stunned by this tragic loss," said Grace CEO Paul Norris.

Move on!