The $200 Billion Miscarriage of Justice

Asbestos lawyers are pitting plaintiffs who aren't sick against companies that never made the stuff--and extracting billions for themselves.

"You indicated that you walked three or four miles a day?" a defense lawyer asked plaintiff James Curry this past October in a rural courthouse in Lexington, Miss.

"Correct," answered Curry, a 65-year-old former railroad worker in seemingly good health. Curry and five co-plaintiffs were in court seeking compensation for exceedingly mild cases of asbestosis and other "asbestos-related conditions." Such conditions--scars, marks, opacities, and other imperfections in the lungs that show up in X-rays--are not necessarily accompanied by any impairment or symptom severe enough to spur someone to see a doctor. Nevertheless, most state courts recognize these conditions as "compensable injuries," that is, the proper subject of lawsuits.

Like most asbestos plaintiffs today, Curry and his co-plaintiffs were never asbestos workers per se. They were, rather, laborers, janitors, plant workers, or general maintenance men who, once in a while during their long working lives, allegedly either handled asbestos-containing products or worked in the general vicinity of others who did.

"And you also jog?" the defense lawyer asked Curry.
"No, I don't jog anymore.... I stopped after '96."
"Did you tell them at your deposition [in March 2001] that you jog?"
"Possibility that I did.... Just made a mistake."

This past Oct. 26 the jury returned a verdict for Curry and his five co-plaintiffs against three defendant corporations of $150 million--$25 million per plaintiff--in compensatory (not punitive) damages. Four defense doctors had testified that none of the plaintiffs suffered from any asbestos-related condition whatsoever, but the plaintiffs' doctor, a Jackson pulmonologist, had disagreed. None of the plaintiffs claimed to have incurred any medical expenses or to have ever lost a day of work due to asbestos exposure.

The prospect of winning verdicts like Curry's has turned the original mass tort--asbestos litigation--into the ultimate mass farce. There are now about 49,000 asbestos plaintiffs awaiting trial in Lexington, Fayette, Port Gibson, Pascagoula, and other propitious plaintiffs' venues in Mississippi, and at least 200,000 more cases nationwide--mainly concentrated in other favorable plaintiffs' locales sprinkled across such states as Texas, Louisiana, West Virginia, New York, and California. The nation's dockets are now so jammed with asbestos suits being brought on behalf of minimally injured people that lawyers who represent the truly ill are teaming up with asbestos defendants to demand reform.

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PAKISTANI JUSTICE

In 1985, one Muzaffar Ali Shah was released from Lahore Mental Hospital after 37 years of confinement. On migration to Pakistan in 1947, Muzaffar had opened a shop. Some time later, his shop was burgled and when he went to file a report, he was arrested under the Lunacy Act. Record, or rather the lack thereof, showed that he was wrongly arrested and never produced before a court.

One Mukhtar, a former subedar-major in the British Indian Army, was arrested and convicted for attempted murder in 1952 in Kohat and sentenced to seven years, but spent the next 18 years in jail. Released in 1970, he was arrested again in Karachi, and was not released until 1987. Mukhtar, who had land and business in Kohat, said he was framed by someone on the attempt to murder charge, which led to his conviction in Kohat. The same man later followed him to Karachi and had him arrested again, without any lawful authority whatsoever.

In acquitting Mukhtar, a district bench of the Sindh High Court, observed: "There is no mention of any remand order having been issued by any court. Therefore, the detenue has been kept in detention without any lawful authority. It has also been stated that he is under trial, but no documents to that effect have been shown by the Advocate General or the Home Department".

Then there is the case of Meher Din, who came out of jail in 1987. He was arrested by Lahore Police in 1966, when he was 20, falsely accused of murder. His two-decades incarceration began thus: "Are you Meher Din?" the Lahore Police asked. "Yes", he replied. "Where do you live?" "In Badami Bagh", he answered. "Is not your father's name Imam Din?" "No, my father's name is Yameen". "You are not Meher Din, son of Imam Din, who has committed a murder?" "No, I am Meher Din, son of Yameen, and I have killed no one." "Well," said the policeman, "you come with us anyway."

Meher Din was arrested, prosecuted and acquitted. But instead of being released, he was handed over to Karachi Police, who were also looking for the elusive murderer Meher Din, son of Imam Din. Having failed to catch him, the police put poor Meher Din, son of Yameen, in jail for the next 17 years in jail.

The above happy endings, for lack of a better word, should draw attention to the scale of lawlessness of the law-enforcing agencies in Pakistan. The few cases of illegal detention that have come to light represent merely the tip of the iceberg.

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