Here is an excerpt of an interesting book called "Dust Up - Asbestos Litigation And The Failure Of Commonsense Policy Reform" Which, as by its title you may be able to tell, relates to asbestos in the Legal area. Here is the excerpt, as follows:
THE PUZZLE: A CLOSER LOOK
Exploring the recent politics of asbestos injury compensation takes the analysis into largely uncharted territory. A superb literature documents the cost and inconsistency of asbestos litigation and describes the pertinent judicial decisions and litigation strategies used by lawyers and judges during the past thirty years (e.g., Kakalik et al. 1983; Hensler et al. 1985; Sugarman 1989; McGovern 1989; Hensler et al. 2001; Hensler 2002; Issacharoff 2002: Carroll et al. 2002, 2005; White 2002, 2005; Carrington 2007; Hanlon and Smetak 2007; and see, generally, Nagareda 2007). A smaller body of prescriptive work debates what Congress should do in response to the asbestos crisis (e.g., Glass 1983; Cardozo Symposium 1992; Schwartz, Behrens, and Tedesco 2003; McGovern 2003).
Almost no scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the politics of asbestos injury compensation. Instead, there are several journalistic accounts. Some of these accounts are now dated (Brodeur 1986), and others focus mainly on Libby, Montana—the home of a vermiculite mine
BACKGROUND
that caused this once-pristine town to be designated a toxic waste site (Bowker 2003; Peacock 2003; Schneider and McCumber 2004). To the extent that these accounts touch on the broader politics of asbestos injury compensation, they are impressionistic, providing interesting nuggets of information but no sustained analysis.
Looking beyond the specific literature on the asbestos problem, there is a general literature on the politics of civil litigation in the United States (e.g., O'Connell 1979; Epstein 1988; Elliott and Talarico 1991; Campbell, Kessler, and Shepherd 1995; Kagan 1994, 2001; Barnes 1997; Burke 2002). But the failure of the politics of efficiency in the case of asbestos litigation reform is more, not less, puzzling in light of this body of work. As is more fully described in chapter 3, this literature provides a laundry list of factors that should increase the chances of successfully using the politics of efficiency to build a coalition that can overcome the expected opposition from trial lawyers and pass some type of reform: (1) support from strategically placed policy entrepreneurs, (2) Republican majorities, (3) bipartisan support, (4) judicial calls for legislation, (5) high administrative costs and legal uncertainty, and (6) an expert consensus on the lack of secondary policy benefits of litigation. All these factors were present during the 109th Congress, but the politics of efficiency still failed to create a sufficiently broad bipartisan coalition to push reform across the finish line.
The questions remain: Why did the politics of efficiency fail, given these seemingly favorable political and policy circumstances? Why did stakeholders other than lawyers fail to unite behind reforms that aimed at replacing a notoriously inefficient, inconsistent, and sometimes fraudulent system of compensation that was costing them billions of dollars? What are the broader lessons of this failure?
OVERVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT
This book examines these questions by drawing on multiple sources, including the legislative record, judicial decisions, media accounts, and participant interviews, and by employing multiple methods, including qualitative and quantitative analyses. It aims to describe the recent politics of a major, ongoing public health crisis and to use this substantively important case as a lens to examine the promise and limits of the politics of efficiency. In exploring this issue, the book takes up a host of others, including the scope and nature of civil litigation reform, the US system's current capacity for institutional change, and how scholars should grapple with the complexity of contemporary American policymaking.
TODAY’S CHALLENGING LEGISLATIVE ENVIRONMENT
It needs to be stressed at the outset that this is not a wor3k of pure policy or legal history. No effort is made to provide a comprehensive chronology of recent events in the area of asbestos injury compensation or a detailed examination of the many important legal developments within asbestos litigation. Instead, this book offers a critical case study that aims to identify patterns of interbranch governmental relations that help reveal institutional constrains on improving public policy and the operation of the US legal system for the benefit of both ordinary Americans and businesses.
(Appendix A further explains the relevant case study methods, including both their strengths and weaknesses.)
The analysis proceeds in five chapters, which have been divided analytically into three parts: background, case study, and implications. The present chapter has given some of this background, and chapter 2 provides the rest. It offers an overview of the asbestos crisis in the united states by tracing the rise of asbestos consumption and litigation, the growing critiques of asbestos litigation and the related rise of the politics of efficiency, and the institutional response leading up to the latest congressional efforts to reform the system. It argues that the asbestos crisis is best understood as a multifaceted problem that encompasses both a global health crisis and a national institutional crisis, which reflects a deeply layered approach to compensating asbestos victims.
125 S Clark St Chicago, IL adxasbestosremoval.com 773-345-7074
THE PUZZLE: A CLOSER LOOK
Exploring the recent politics of asbestos injury compensation takes the analysis into largely uncharted territory. A superb literature documents the cost and inconsistency of asbestos litigation and describes the pertinent judicial decisions and litigation strategies used by lawyers and judges during the past thirty years (e.g., Kakalik et al. 1983; Hensler et al. 1985; Sugarman 1989; McGovern 1989; Hensler et al. 2001; Hensler 2002; Issacharoff 2002: Carroll et al. 2002, 2005; White 2002, 2005; Carrington 2007; Hanlon and Smetak 2007; and see, generally, Nagareda 2007). A smaller body of prescriptive work debates what Congress should do in response to the asbestos crisis (e.g., Glass 1983; Cardozo Symposium 1992; Schwartz, Behrens, and Tedesco 2003; McGovern 2003).
Almost no scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the politics of asbestos injury compensation. Instead, there are several journalistic accounts. Some of these accounts are now dated (Brodeur 1986), and others focus mainly on Libby, Montana—the home of a vermiculite mine
BACKGROUND
that caused this once-pristine town to be designated a toxic waste site (Bowker 2003; Peacock 2003; Schneider and McCumber 2004). To the extent that these accounts touch on the broader politics of asbestos injury compensation, they are impressionistic, providing interesting nuggets of information but no sustained analysis.
Looking beyond the specific literature on the asbestos problem, there is a general literature on the politics of civil litigation in the United States (e.g., O'Connell 1979; Epstein 1988; Elliott and Talarico 1991; Campbell, Kessler, and Shepherd 1995; Kagan 1994, 2001; Barnes 1997; Burke 2002). But the failure of the politics of efficiency in the case of asbestos litigation reform is more, not less, puzzling in light of this body of work. As is more fully described in chapter 3, this literature provides a laundry list of factors that should increase the chances of successfully using the politics of efficiency to build a coalition that can overcome the expected opposition from trial lawyers and pass some type of reform: (1) support from strategically placed policy entrepreneurs, (2) Republican majorities, (3) bipartisan support, (4) judicial calls for legislation, (5) high administrative costs and legal uncertainty, and (6) an expert consensus on the lack of secondary policy benefits of litigation. All these factors were present during the 109th Congress, but the politics of efficiency still failed to create a sufficiently broad bipartisan coalition to push reform across the finish line.
The questions remain: Why did the politics of efficiency fail, given these seemingly favorable political and policy circumstances? Why did stakeholders other than lawyers fail to unite behind reforms that aimed at replacing a notoriously inefficient, inconsistent, and sometimes fraudulent system of compensation that was costing them billions of dollars? What are the broader lessons of this failure?
OVERVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT
This book examines these questions by drawing on multiple sources, including the legislative record, judicial decisions, media accounts, and participant interviews, and by employing multiple methods, including qualitative and quantitative analyses. It aims to describe the recent politics of a major, ongoing public health crisis and to use this substantively important case as a lens to examine the promise and limits of the politics of efficiency. In exploring this issue, the book takes up a host of others, including the scope and nature of civil litigation reform, the US system's current capacity for institutional change, and how scholars should grapple with the complexity of contemporary American policymaking.
TODAY’S CHALLENGING LEGISLATIVE ENVIRONMENT
It needs to be stressed at the outset that this is not a wor3k of pure policy or legal history. No effort is made to provide a comprehensive chronology of recent events in the area of asbestos injury compensation or a detailed examination of the many important legal developments within asbestos litigation. Instead, this book offers a critical case study that aims to identify patterns of interbranch governmental relations that help reveal institutional constrains on improving public policy and the operation of the US legal system for the benefit of both ordinary Americans and businesses.
(Appendix A further explains the relevant case study methods, including both their strengths and weaknesses.)
The analysis proceeds in five chapters, which have been divided analytically into three parts: background, case study, and implications. The present chapter has given some of this background, and chapter 2 provides the rest. It offers an overview of the asbestos crisis in the united states by tracing the rise of asbestos consumption and litigation, the growing critiques of asbestos litigation and the related rise of the politics of efficiency, and the institutional response leading up to the latest congressional efforts to reform the system. It argues that the asbestos crisis is best understood as a multifaceted problem that encompasses both a global health crisis and a national institutional crisis, which reflects a deeply layered approach to compensating asbestos victims.
125 S Clark St Chicago, IL adxasbestosremoval.com 773-345-7074
