In 2020, the Missouri General Assembly continued its efforts toward tort reform related to asbestos trust claim transparency related to civil litigation. As explained below, S.B. 575 sought to make clear from the beginning of a lawsuit the scope and extent of asbestos trust fund (“Trust”) claims available to a plaintiff and to allow evidence related to such claims to be admissible at trial.
S.B. 575, sponsored by Senator Bill Eigel (St. Charles County), would have imposed substantive and procedural requirements for lawsuits filed for damages related to asbestos exposure. The ...
Thirty-six billion dollars. That's the value of assets in all asbestos-related bankruptcy trusts, according to the United States Government Accountability Office (and that's 2011 numbers!).[1] With so much money sitting idly by, as the old adage goes, the money is talking. When money talks, the United States Congress listens (that should be another adage).
"Asbestos litigation has been the longest-running mass tort litigation in U.S. history and arose out of millions of Americans' lengthy and widespread occupational exposure to asbestos[.]"[2] As asbestos litigation enters ...
