Is the asbestos ripoff legislation dead?
The final and most absolute safeguard in a democracy is the access of ordinary people to a fair judiciary, where their grievances can be tried in court by a jury of their peers. The right of Americans to demand redress from those who have wronged them is one of our most cherished constitutional rights. Although asbestos makers reaped billions by poisoning workers, navy veterans, moms, schoolkids, doctors, congressmen, athletes, pipefitters, painters, steelworkers, the old, the young, the sick and the strong, the tort system has consistently provided a venue for victims to hold the poisoners accountable.
For corporate America in general, and asbestos makers in particular, no item has been higher on their agenda than tarring the constitutional right to redress, smearing those who were poisoned, and denigrating the men and women who make a living representing those who were wronged. With Sen. Arlen Specter on their side, the Republican majority in the house and senate worked feverishly during their legislative majority to permanently strip Americans poisoned by asbestos of their constitutional right of access to the courts.
The vehicle for this usurpation of tort law that goes back hundreds of years has been misnomer legislation that would have given billions of taxpayer dollars to asbestos makers who knowingly elected profits over public health, and then made it difficult or impossible for those who were harmed to make their claims in court. Victims, losing their right of redress, would have been thrown into a bureaucratic maze designed to pay them pennies on the dollar or nothing at all, over an undetermined span of time. For mesothelioma patients, whose lives depend on quick access to cutting-edge medical help and the money to pay for it, the legislation was essentially a bail-out for the wrongdoers and a death decree for their victims.
The legislation was ultimately pushed back thanks to a bipartisan coalition of senators, victims’ and patients’ organizations, medical groups, working people, the insurance industry, and conservative taxpayer rights organizations who opposed yet another tax-funded corporate welfare project.
With a Democratic senate and Democratic house, what are the prospects for a renewed push by those who would prefer corporate welfare and would strip away the constitutional right of redress for asbestos victims?
In brief, we are pleased to report, the prospects are poor. But they are not “zero.” The minority party can still try to sneak in legislation through floor amendments when other, unrelated legislation comes to a vote. And the minority is still funded by well-heeled corporate lobbyists who, like a bad rash, absolutely will not go away. But the strong support of senators like Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Dick Durbin, the #2 man in the senate, means that proponents of the corporate asbestos welfare bill will face hostility at the top. Should the asbestos company welfare bill gurgle to the surface in the senate, it will face even greater opposition in the house. Last minute horse-trading of votes in the senate on other bills could also provide an avenue for the moribund legislation to get a second lease on life.
Observers believe that killing the corporate asbestos welfare bill in the last session led to other big gains. The debate brought attention to the fundamental right of victims to have redress under the tort system. It transformed what many saw initially as a narrow issue into one that affects the rights of all Americans, and it exposed the nationwide impact of asbestos poisoning as an issue of broad public concern. There now exists a golden opportunity for people across all sectors of public life to use this momentum to restore the fundamental right of redress where it has been dangerously curbed, and to protect it from incursion where the right still flourishes.
The defeated FAIR Act did, we note, contain one silver lining. For the first time, Congress acknowledged its role, along with industry, in the creation of a mesothelioma research and treatment plan, which had been proposed by MARF. When the bill died, so did the momentum to fund research at the federal level. As patient advocates, we must continue to press our elected officials to fix the asbestos diease epidemic by investing in research for a cure.
