The Asbestos Story: The Asbestos Story - Insurance Industry Predicts 410,000 Deaths

Part 11: Insurance Industry Predicts 410,000 Deaths

The Asbestos Story: America's Greatest Industrial Tragedy
A Tale of Deceit, Design & Temerity
By Christopher M. Placitella
Cohen, Placitella & Roth, P.C.

Eventually, the American Insurance Association conducts its own study in 1977 to estimate how many people will ultimately die from Asbestos-induced cancers through the year 1995. The study includes 14 industries and World War II shipyard workers. The results are staggering. 410,000 shipyard workers will die from Asbestos related cancer through 1980.

Using a lung cancer and mesothelioma rate 32% of all deaths, there would be about 154,000 cases, or 6,100 per year. The latency would end in 40 years in 1980. . All female workers are assumed to reach the start of latency in 1955, since the maximum age assumed is 50. Applying the 32% lung cancer and mesothelioma death rate to the 800,000 female workers produces 256,000 cases or 10,200 per year.
Fortunately for industry, most of these cases of death would occur before 1980, and therefore, not become lawsuits because of the statute of limitations. Even under a liberal discovery rule, the statute of limitations in most states is two years form the date of diagnosis.

However, the insurers estimate that from 1977 to 1995 alone, more than 54,000 workers will die from Asbestos related cancer in the 14 industries surveyed. The study goes on to find:

50% of people certified as showing Asbestosis died of or with lung cancer. Therefore, Asbestosis cases should equal twice the number of lung cancer cases.

This study does not address the likely deaths to woman and children who were exposed at home. Nor does the study go beyond 1995 in its estimates.

While each year more and more workers are devastated in injury and mortality, industry continues to fight the workers in court. At first many cases are lost. Other workers settle their cases for less than they are worth, not armed with the true evidence of industry misconduct. As time progresses, more and more evidence is exposed concerning what portions of the industry actually knew about the dangers of Asbestos and when that information first became known.

As a growing number of workers begin to win their cases in court, new strategies emerge by which industry attempts to fight the onslaught of cases it had predicted would occur years earlier, once the truth was known.

In addition to claiming it was unaware that workers using Asbestos products could get sick, certain members of the industry also argue that the not-yet-disabled workers with Asbestosis are simply not injured. Thus, industry argues, if the workers are not injured, they are not entitled to any compensation. Internal industry documents, however, contradict these claims and clearly tell a different story.

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