Claimants’ expert in Garlock trial suggests $1.3 billion settlement figure

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Bates

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Legal Newsline) – A consultant tapped by attorneys representing claimants suing Garlock Sealing Technologies for asbestos exposure estimated the gasket manufacturer would need to devote more than $1.365 billion to a trust to settle pending and future claims against the company during testimony given Thursday.

Mark Peterson, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in social psychology who does estimations for trusts, said based on litigation trends from the past five years, the company would need to devote at least that much money to cover liability Garlock would likely face from people who will develop cases of mesothelioma in the coming years.

Judge George Hodges will ultimately decide how much money the company will need to devote to escape bankruptcy. The bankruptcy trial, which began two weeks ago at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina and is expected to end on Tuesday, will determine the estimated liability of the company for current and future asbestos claims.

Peterson’s estimation is in stark contrast with that of a Garlock consultant who came up with a figure of about $270 million in his own estimation. Charles Bates, chairman of the economic consulting firm Bates White LLC and former assistant professor in the economics department at Johns Hopkins University testified about an estimation report his firm created to assess how much Garlock should put in the trust to compensate valid claimants.

Bates estimated $25 million...

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Fitch report: Workers comp will be hit hard if TRIA not extended

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from ifawebnews.com

Fitch Ratings has issued a report on what it believes will be the impact on different aspects of business should the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act not be renewed. Present legislation, the Terrorist Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, doesn’t expire until Dec. 31, 2014, but renewals of current policies will begin in January.

TRIA was passed after the 9/11 terrorism attacks to act as a backstop of sorts in the event a future event yielded similar financial losses.

The report finds that the most critical impact will be on workers compensation. Reduced workers’ compensation coverage availability would have broad economic consequences for employers, according to the report. Workers’ compensation insurers could be especially susceptible to large losses if a major terrorist event takes place without TRIPRA coverage. “Recognition of this vulnerability may lead to a withdrawal of insurer’s underwriting capacity from the workers’ compensation market, particularly in industries and geographic areas with greater perceived risk of terrorism-related losses,” Fitch said in its report.

Impact will also be felt in commercial property and business interruption lines of insurance, in addition to insurer credit ratings and the commercial mortgage-backed securities market.

The report cautions that if TRIA is not renewed, “demand for private market terrorism insurance protection will inevitably increase and premium rates will significantly...

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BP ordered to pay $130 million to oil spill claims administrator

Today's post was shared by JURIST and comes from jurist.org

[JURIST] Judge Sally Shushan of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana [official website] on Wednesday ordered British Petroleum (BP) [corporate website] to pay the third quarter and some fourth quarter expenses for the gulf oil spill claim administration program [official website website]. The budget and fees for the program totaled over $130 million. This order comes as the FBI esearches allegations by BP that the disbursement process has been corrupted. Although Shushan acknowledged that BP raised legitimate concerns about claims administrators approving false filings for a percentage of the payouts, she concluded that the program could not be halted on short notice based on the allegations alone. Although BP appealed immediately, US District Judge Carl Barbier, who is overseeing the spill litigation, upheld the decision within hours. The claim administration program is expected to continue operations while the court-appointed administrator and several former employees are investigated for fraud [FBI summary].

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill [JURIST news archive] in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest commercial disasters in modern history, and was responsible for the destruction of protected wildlife habitats that are still under reconstruction to this day. Two weeks ago, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced that Halliburton Energy Services [corporate website; JURIST news archive] agreed to plead guilty to...

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Debtors’ in asbestos bankruptcy case appeal estimation decision to Third Circuit

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Fitzgerald

But then came Fitzgerald’s 50-page May 20 memorandum opinion in which the Delaware-based jurist estimated the liabilities of Specialty Products Holding Corp. and Bondex International to be in the neighborhood of $1.1 billion, many millions of dollars higher than what the debtors contended the true figure to be.

An expert working for the bankrupt companies – they are referred to as ‘debtors’ in bankruptcy proceedings as opposed to ‘defendants’ in the tort system – had estimated total future liabilities at between $465 million to $700 million nominal or $300 million to $575 million net present value.

In the end, Fitzgerald, who retired from the bench shortly after rendering her decision in the case, estimated the liabilities to be closer to the figures thrown out by attorneys representing the Official Committee of Asbestos Personal Injury Claimants and the Future Claimants’ Representative, numbers that were in the billion-dollar range.

Appropriate estimate

In her May decision, Fitzgerald wrote that after considering all of the evidence in the case, exhibits and arguments presented to the court during a weeklong estimation hearing in Pittsburgh earlier this year and during subsequent briefs and other legal filings, she considered an appropriate estimate for mesothelioma claims, pending and future, to be $1.1 billion net present value.

The judge also determined that an additional six percent, or $66 million, would have to be...

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Plaintiffs’ expert in lead paint trial says industry took responsibility for public health

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Markowitz

SAN JOSE, Calif. (Legal Newsline) – Manufacturers of lead based pigments and paints were aware of the dangers lead exposure posed nearly 100 years ago, but promoted them anyway, according to testimony from the latest expert witness in a public lawsuit against current owners of former lead paint and pigment manufacturing companies.

Dr. Gerald Markowitz, a historian and professor at City University of New York, blamed a deregulation principle that allowed paint companies to continue mixing lead in paint for generations, despite known and documented health hazards within the paint industry.

“There was a firm belief in the U.S. up until very recently that regulation of toxic substances, except in food, should not be regulated,” Markowitz said. “It was a firm belief within (the) industry that they had responsibility rather than government to protect the workforce and protect the public.”

Markowitz testified at trial Wednesday in a case brought by 10 cities and counties in California, including Los Angeles County and the cities of San Diego and San Francisco, against companies and parent companies of one-time lead-based paint makers. The plaintiffs want the companies to pay for the cost of eliminating lead paint from homes in their jurisdictions. Defendants include The Sherwin-Williams Company, ConAgra Grocery Products, DuPont and Atlantic Richfield Company.

The People of California v. Atlantic Richfield Company et al is being heard...

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Move Over: Obesity as a medical condition is coming to workers' compensation

The recent action by the American Medical Association to recognize obesity as a medical condition is going to have a super-sized impact on workers' compensation systems throughout the nation. Today's post is shared from insurancejournal.com

Report: Obesity Monkier to Impact California Workers’ Comp

"The recognition of obesity as a disease may have a significant impact on workers’ compensation claims in California, a group said in a report on Thursday.

The group issued the report following a decision in June by the American Medical Association House of Delegates to reclassifying obesity as “a disease state.”

In the past obesity in workers’ comp went largely unreported because it was not considered a condition that needed to be addressed to treat most work related injuries or illnesses, according to the report from the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

But with obesity reclassified as a disease medical providers may feel a greater responsibility to counsel obese patients about their weight, or if treatment for a compensable injury causes significant weight gain, CWCI stated in its report........


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The Importance of Occupational Safety and Health: Making for a “Super” Workplace

Today's post was shared by Safe Healthy Workers and comes from blogs.cdc.gov

August 7th, 2013 9:39 am ET  -  Jaclyn Krah, MA; Richard L. Unger

Graphic by Stephen R. Leonard

There’s just something about superhero movie summer releases that gets us here at NIOSH excited about safety. This summer the source of our inspiration came from theMan of Steel© movie. In the film, pre-Superman Clark Kent is working as a commercial fisherman (a hazardous job if you’re not a man of steel). He risks exposing his amazing abilities when he swoops in to save the workers on a nearby oil rig who are in great danger as the rig implodes around them.

The scene is reminiscent of Action Comics© issue #3, the original Superman comic book series dating all the way back to 1938. In Action Comics #3, “Superman Battles Death Underground“, (issued 75 years ago this month) Superman is in the right place at the right time to save a coal miner, as well as his rescue crew, from an unsafe mine filled with toxic gas. We see instances such as these riddled throughout comic books and superhero movies. There’s always a hero around to save the day.

Unfortunately, in real life we can’t rely on the Superman – but we can rely on the many super men and women in the occupational health and safety field who are always striving to improve working conditions to keep workers out of harm’s way long before they need saving. When it comes to research, regulations, and recommendations for improving workplace safety, a lot has...

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