After the landmark opinion by (old) 5th Circuit Judge John Minor Wisdom in Borel v. Fibreboard plaintiffs' lawyers took the evidence amassed by Dr. Irving Selikoff and others, and determinedly confronted the difficult issues in asbestos cases: identification of the defendant suppliers, the problem of multiple suppliers, apportionment of liability, proving causation of disease, the impact of smoking,the problem of latency - delayed development of disease many years after inhalation when witnesses and records (if any) were unavailable.
The plaintiffs' lawyers and their efforts have been widely disparaged - their success painted as greed, or the product of dishonesty, etc. Prof. Anita Bernstein - a stranger to the litigation - has done plaintiffs' lawyers (and I was one) the mitzvah of recognizing their collective achievements as zealous advocates for their clients in her new article Asbestos Achievements, published in Southwestern Law Review and available on SSRN HERE.
Images: Judge John Minor Wisdom, Dr. Irving Selikoff, Prof. Anita Bernstein
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