Attorneys and Legal Information

2 (November 1998). 16.
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Class Action Lawsuits and Lawyers

"(14) In addition, a tension exists between using judges with special areas of expertise to improve case outcomes and the tradition and values of using nonspecialist juries. Addressing Asbestos Claims As noted in Chapter 2, claims for injuries resulting from asbestos exposure have grown rapidly over the past three decades, have involved larger amounts of damages than the average tort case, and have been implicated in the bankruptcies of dozens of defendants. Another notable feature of asbestos claims is that a large share of the plaintiffs have not yet become sick--that is, they are not functionally impaired--but nonetheless they are subject to statutes of limitations that begin when they discover (or should have discovered) bodily evidence of exposure. Thus, one option that the Congress has considered is to specify certain medical criteria that asbestos victims would have to satisfy in order to pursue claims.
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Class Action Lawsuits and Lawyers

S. district courts in 1996 had a median final award of $252,000. Policymakers and the business community have been concerned about the increasing costs of asbestos litigation. Researchers at RAND estimate that claims for asbestos-related compensation totaled $54 billion through 2000, with estimated future costs ranging from another $145 billion to $210 billion.
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