Asbestos lawsuits spread like wildfire

Rochester Steverson has a tough time these days doing much of anything because of lung cancer he claims was caused by the asbestos he says he breathed while working 16 years in Pittsburgh area steel mills.

"I can't hardly get around," said Steverson, 65, of Pittsburgh's West End neighborhood of Windgap, who worked at Jones & Laughlin Steel and LTV Steel Corp. mills on the South Side, Hazelwood and Aliquippa.

Working around the mill's open-hearth furnace, he wore asbestos suits so he wouldn't be burned by the 3,000-degree heat from the steelmaking process. But the material in the suit that kept him alive in mill he thinks may have caused the life-threatening disease he struggles with every day.

Steverson, a longtime smoker, was diagnosed Dec. 23. Acting on the advice of his steel mill buddies who already filed asbestos claims, Steverson contacted a Pittsburgh attorney and provided medical documentation of his condition.

Another former steelworker, Raymond Esola, 80, of Monessen, said he was exposed to asbestos during the 38 years he worked in the coke-producing ovens at the former Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. plant in Monessen.

Esola, who suffers from lung cancer, says he wore protective suits with asbestos while working up against the coal-burning coke batteries, and that has affected his lungs. He says he has his good days and suffers through the bad ones.

Steverson and Esola are among an estimated 100 million workers who have been exposed to asbestos, according to the Sebago Associates 2002 report for the American Insurance Association.

So many workers have been exposed to asbestos because the mineral, which has been mined and used commercially in North America since the late 1800s, was in more than 5,000 products, according to the National Cancer Institute. Its uses include flooring materials, roofing and insulation, because the strong fibers are not affected by heat or chemicals and resist biodegradation.

Medical journals began to publish articles linking asbestos to lung cancer and lung diseases in the 1930s. Research found there were a number of deaths from asbestos, especially in asbestos mining towns. But, it wasn't until the late 1970s that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned its use in wallboard patching compounds. In 1989, the federal Environmental Protection Agency banned all new uses of it.

Steversoni and Esola took their complaints about asbestos-related disease to court.

Steverson filed a lawsuit in Allegheny County Court in March, against 48 manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of asbestos, alleging his cancer was caused by exposure to asbestos.

Steverson's and Esola's 's lawsuits were among almost 2,900 asbestos-related lawsuits filed in Allegheny County Court since 1995. They are part of what the Rand Corp.'s Institute for Civil Justice estimated are more than 600,000 asbestos claims filed in state and federal courts against about 8,400 firms since the early 1970s.

The defendants in the asbestos litigation are spread across 85 percent of the U.S. economy and are involved in nearly every industry, said U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Philadelphia, who is a sponsor of legislation designed to set up a $140 billion trust fund to compensate victims.

Rand's 2002 study, which will be updated later this year, estimated that asbestos litigation had cost corporate America more than $70 billion and caused at least 70 firms to file for bankruptcy. Companies that sought federal bankruptcy protection cut approximately 60,000 jobs. Those jobless workers, on average, will lose between $25,000 and $30,000 in wages over their careers because of unemployment and the possibility of landing lower-paying jobs, Sebago Associates' reported.

While bankruptcies have cost the corporations billions, the legal maneuver may have cost asbestos victims money they likely would have received in settlements, said Richard Wiles, president of the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C.

One of those victims of the asbestos-related bankruptcies was Esola, who last year settled his lawsuit with nine of the 26 defendants for an undisclosed amount. But, his attorney, Edward Beachler of the Downtown law firm of Caroselli, Beachler, McTiernan & Conboy LLC , said that Esola probably will not receive any additional money because of bankruptcies of about six of the defendants. Those companies remain in bankruptcy as they apparently wait for Congress to resolve the trust fund issue, Beachler said.

"They will pay less (to asbestos victims) under the trust fund than they would in bankruptcy," Beachler said.

Esola is far more blunt about his predicament. "I aint going to get any more (money)," he said.

Companies that filed under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code were able to stop ongoing and future litigation. They could protect the company from future claims. Those bankrupt companies set up court-ordered trusts to settle any asbestos claims, some of which probably have paid more into the fund than if they had not gone into bankruptcy, Wiles said.

In Western Pennsylvania, more than 15 current and former companies in the manufacturing industry have been entangled in hundreds of thousands of asbestos claims over the past 20 years.

Most of the Western Pennsylvania firms involved in asbestos-related lawsuits stated in their annual reports they do not believe the lawsuits they face will have a material effect on their financial positions. Many firms say that cases have been dismissed, or they carry insurance coverage to help offset any losses.

Downtown-based PPG Industries Inc. found itself named in more than 116,000 lawsuits, mostly because of Pittsburgh Corning, a joint venture with Corning Inc. that manufactured and distributed asbestos-containing insulation products, such as pipe covering and block insulation.

Pittsburgh Corning filed for bankruptcy in 2000, and the case remains in bankruptcy court. The company last year projected its short-term liability at $404 million, and long-term liability at $440 million. It anticipates that its insurance carriers will pour $1.7 billion into a trust fund set up to handle the claims from alleged victims.

U.S. Steel Corp. said in its 2004 annual report that faces about 500 active asbestos lawsuits that involve about 11,000 plaintiffs. More than 10,300 of those claims are filed in jurisdictions that permit filings with a massive number of plaintiffs. The claims typically involve workers in U.S. Steel's former Great Lakes shipping fleet, those exposed at steel mills and workers exposed to asbestos in products no longer made by the company.

The company said it believes the asbestos litigation will not have a material adverse effect on its finances, in part because pending claims have generally declined over the past several years and U.S. Steel has not employed maritime workers or made or sold products with asbestos for many years.