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"There Is Something Very Wrong Here"
When word of Martindale's testimony reached U.S. District Judge Janis Jack in her Corpus Christi, Texas, courtroom, she was livid. Judge Jack was in charge of the 3,617 Martindale cases and over 5,000 more. She scheduled additional hearings, set for February 2005, after opening an unprecedented cache of documents for Mulholland and his colleagues.The hearings dragged on for three days. Seven doctors and two screening company owners testified, each damaging the victims' cases more than the one before.
"Your Honor, there is something very wrong here," Mulholland said about the testimony. "This is a real courtroom. You are a real federal judge. But these lawsuits are simply not real."
The judge, who is also a trained nurse, agreed. In a June 2005 order, Judge Jack wrote: "These diagnoses were driven by neither health nor justice; they were manufactured for money. The record is not clear who originally devised this scheme, but it is clear that the lawyers, doctors and screening companies were all willing participants."
With that, Judge Jack sent about 10,000 silicosis cases on their way to the dumpster.
The judge's ruling was sweet vindication to a small band of lawyers and academics who'd been claiming for years that asbestosis and silicosis litigation had morphed into a massive tort scam. The cases spurned by the judge, however, could only hint at the dimensions of the scandal. "Over the life of the asbestos and silica litigation, I believe bogus and invalid claims will total at least $40 billion," says Lester Brickman, a professor of law at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.
So far, at least 79 companies have filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos litigation alone, and 60,000 workers have lost their jobs. About 8,400 companies with facilities nationwide have faced lawsuits. Meanwhile, insurance companies are out $59 billion through 2005, with $34 billion paid out in cash and another $25 billion locked away in reserves. Those costs get passed along to consumers and companies as higher premiums and eventually higher prices for thousands of products and services.
And what about those plaintiff lawyers behind the flood of lawsuits? "I would estimate their fees are north of $20 billion," says Brickman, who has exhaustively researched the scandal over 16 years. "The bottom line is that in mass torts, fraud works."
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