Mesothelioma - Settlements, Attorneys, Lawsuits, Compensation and Cost

Mesothelioma Settlements & Compensation

How much a mesothelioma victim will receive as compensation will be determined by several factors, such as the laws in the state, the parties responsible, lost income, the extent of your injuries, how well the case is presented, liability, the likely verdict value, the credibility of the injured party, where the case is tried, reputation of the attorneys, etc. Recovery amounts in mesothelioma settlements vary wildly, from several thousand to several million. According the Wall Street Journal, lawyers say a typical mesothelioma award in a mesothelioma settlement is $1 million.   If the case actually goes to trial, the average award was $6 million in 2001, which was triple the amount awarded just two years earlier.

Over half a million asbestos and mesothelioma injury claims have been filed to date. The first known asbestos lawsuit was in 1929 in New Jersey. With a mesothelioma settlement, the parties involved in an asbestos related suit can resolve the case without going to trial. Currently there are 200,000 asbestos litigation cases and about 50,000 asbestos relates law suits are predicted each year. The high number of asbestos-related lawsuits has caused about 70 corporations to file for bankruptcy and thousands of claims to get stuck in court dockets.

Most mesothelioma lawsuits share some commonalities:

• All of them involve attorneys, and unfortunately almost all of them are long and tedious processes.
• Almost all of these lawsuits concern exposure to asbestos that took place 30 – 50 years ago;
• A lot of effort must be spent on mesothelioma research to ascertain how, where and when you were exposed to asbestos, as well as to identify the product(s) and company(ies) responsible;
• Mesothelioma lawyers usually work on a contingency fee basis, which means that they take the money only if the lawsuits are successful. The money lawyers receive a cut from the compensation, which normally figures around 35%;
• Since mesothelioma is a disease, an Independent Medical Examiner will probably be involved.

 Mesothelioma Attorneys

Because Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that can take up to 20 years to develop, Mesothelioma attorneys need specific training and experience when seeking compensation for clients. Mesothelioma attorneys have a specific team of medical professionals who interpret health records and testing documentation to prove the specific correlation between a patient's side-effects and the Mesothelioma diagnosis.

Leading mesothelioma lawsuit firms

• Early, Ludwick, Sweeney & Strauss has been a leading law firm in the United States Since April 1980, representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against the asbestos industry.
• Goldberg, Persky & White, P.C., GPW has been involved in asbestos cases since 1978. Its participation in the gathering of evidence—such as the testimony of corporate executives and doctors and the accumulation of corporate documents—has created the basis for successfully suing the asbestos industry.
• Baron & Budd was one of the first law firms in the country to fight for the rights of asbestos victims and is still widely recognized as a national leader in asbestos litigation to this day.

Some previous celebrated Asbestos related Mesothelioma cases have settled for:

• $250 Million in Settlements for 70-Year Old retired U.S. Steel worker, Gary, IN (3/2003);
• November 22, 2006, Chrysler Ordered to Pay $20 Million to Mesothelioma Victim. A New York jury ordered DaimlerChrysler AG to pay $20 Million to a 73-year-old, former brake repairman;
• $55 Million in Settlements for 47-Year Old Construction Worker;
• 2005 year, Los Angeles, an 82-year old man who was exposed to asbestos as a machinist 60 years ago and contracted mesothelioma was awarded $10 million in damages.

Treatment advocates say that better diagnostic tests, combined with the availability of more effective treatment, means more people with malignant mesothelioma are diagnosed at a younger age and live longer. Increased survival is associated with increased treatment costs.

There could be identified two costs to society related to mesothelioma treatment:

• cost to the public health system;
• loss of tax revenue by governments due to Asbestos mining companies claiming a tax deduction for the compensation payments that are made to the victims.

For the first point, the Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia has stated that by 2020 there will be 13000 cases of mesothelioma and 40000 asbestos related lung cancer diseases, totaling 53000 people in Australia. This means that 53000 people will need to have constant medical attention for the next 15 years or so. And the cot will be burdened by current taxpayer and the next generation of taxpayers.

For the second point, governments are essentially missing out on tax revenue as the asbestos companies are claiming the compensation payment as a tax deduction. For illustrative purposes, assume that an asbestos mining company pays out $100m per year over five years to the victims and the corporate tax rate is 30 per cent. Therefore over five years, a respective government is losing $150m in revenue. It means that the asbestos mining companies are sharing the costs with the taxpayer. They pay 70 per cent of the compensation payment and the taxpayer pays the remaining balance.

Globally, compensation to sufferers is a very costly for the companies that mined asbestos, processed it and used it in their products, and for their insurers. For example, it has been estimated that the total cost of US asbestos exposures will be between $200bn (£100bn) and $275bn (£138bn), of which around $95bn (£48bn) will be paid by the insurance industry. More than 75 US companies have gone into Chapter 11 insolvency as a result of the asbestos claims against them.

Scottish statistics show, that Mesothelioma accounted for 100 cases in 2000 and costed Scottish National Health Service hospitals an estimated 942,038 pounds. The estimated UK figure in 2000 was at least 16,014,646 pounds because official figures for diagnosed and recorded deaths from mesothelioma are running at over 1700 a year with rises predicted for 2010 of 2000 deaths. By 2003, 50,000 people in the UK had died from diagnosed and recorded mesothelioma since records began. Earlier disease treatment costs would have been significantly lower than those in 2000 but, at 2000 prices, cost to the UK was roughly 471,019,000 pounds in acute hospital expenditure.

www.scambusters.org, www.themesotheliomahome.com, www.mesotheliomahelpcenter.org, mesothelioma-treatments.org, www.freeadvice.com, ezinearticles.com, www.mesotheliomanews.com, www.mesotheliomahelpcenter.org, www.mesotheliomamedicine.com, www.freeadvice.com, www.trine-metcalf.com, ezinearticles.com, www.askdrhealth.com, mesothelioma.stafi.net, www.businessandlaw.com, www.legalweek.com, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Mesothelioma Research - Table of Contents

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