Hundreds of corporations swept into a huge asbestos trial in West Virginia have settled claims brought by some 8,000 people over the last week, lawyers for each side said yesterday.þþPerhaps a dozen companies, including Exxon Mobil and Union Carbide, a unit of Dow Chemical, still plan to go to trial, lawyers said. But pressure on the remaining defendants has increased as companies, including Honeywell International, have dropped out.þþThe companies would not provide information on how much money had been paid to settle the claims. Lawyers for each side said they could not determine the total amount the companies had agreed to pay.þþEven so, lawyers representing individual plaintiffs said some settlements with people claiming injuries from exposure to asbestos, a carcinogenic fireproofing material, reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars.þþCorporations have already appealed to the United States Supreme Court to intervene in the West Virginia trial because of the large number of plaintiffs and defendants. Lawyers for the companies say that the defendants should not be tried together because their connections to asbestos are different and plaintiffs have various injuries from different sources.þþÿBefore any group of defendants can be tried together, there must be a determination that the claims are sufficiently common and that they can be tried together without prejudice,ÿ said Walter Dellinger, a lawyer at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, which is representing Exxon Mobil. ÿThere has been no such determination about any number of these defendants.ÿþþThe West Virginia trial is unusual because it involves plaintiffs who argue that they were exposed to asbestos in different ways, Mr. Dellinger said. For example, they could have been exposed in contaminated buildings or by products like brake linings, by companies that were manufacturers, owners of buildings or had some other connection to asbestos.þþEven some lawyers for the plaintiffs said the trial was somewhat unusual.þþIt is normal to have 10 to 100 defendants in a case, not 250, said Perry Weitz of Weitz & Luxenberg, which has represented thousands of asbestos plaintiffs. ÿBecause they have so many different plaintiffs with different exposures, that's why you have 250.ÿþþJury selection in the case began yesterday and lawyers said that opening statements could begin as early as this afternoon.þþþ
Source: NY Times
