Daily Yomiuri, Morio Koyama and Fumihiro Kitayama
Published July 18, 2005
A series of asbestos-linked diseases have come to light recently in Japan, but in the United States, known as a litigious country, lawsuits seeking compensation for asbestos-related illnesses have been filed since the 1960s, dealing serious blows to the U.S. economy.
Because of differences in legal systems and situations, it remains to be seen whether similar lawsuits will be filed in Japan, but with the demolition of buildings containing asbestos scheduled to peak after 2010, companies and the government are hurrying to take measures to prevent asbestos-linked diseases from expanding.
The U.S. government began banning the production and sales of asbestos in the 1970s, and in 1989, most manufacturing and sales of asbestos-related products was prohibited.
However, with illnesses caused by asbestos before the ban coming to light recently, lawsuits seeking huge amounts of compensation have been filed.
A 65-year-old man in Pittsburgh, Pa., which is a steel production center, was diagnosed as suffering from lung cancer in December 2004. In March, he filed lawsuits against 48 asbestos makers, saying that during the 16 years he worked for a steel company, he wore work clothes made with asbestos that caused the cancer.
Many people, who were not sick, filed lawsuits on the ground that they could contract cancer because of contact with asbestos.
The Environmental Working Group, a private U.S. research body, believes that 10,000 people die from asbestos-linked diseases every year in the United States.
According to Rand, a nonprofit research organization, 8,400 companies have been named in lawsuits, and companies and insurers are believed to have paid compensation and legal fees amounting to 70 billion dollars as of 2002.
Seventy-three companies that have manufactured and used asbestos have gone bankrupt because of the financial burden of lawsuits. Many companies embroiled in lawsuits have lost their credibility, including seeing falls in their stock prices, even if they have managed to survive.
A 2003 survey by another U.S. survey firm, Navigant Consulting Inc., on companies embroiled in lawsuits found that costs for such firms to procure funds had increased by up to 14 percent due to issuance of more debentures and banks' reluctance to extend loans. Bankruptcies in connection with lawsuits are said to have resulted in more than 30,000 job losses every year.
More than 900,000 people are said to have filed lawsuits, but the number is still believed to be less than 70 percent of all victims of asbestos-related diseases. A Rand official said companies would have to pay between 130 billion dollars and 195 billion dollars in the future.
The U.S. Congress has failed to pass legislation to deal with the problem out of fear that prolonged lawsuits would delay assistance to victims and increase costs. The Senate is deliberating a bill to establish a fund totaling 140 billion dollars to be financed by companies and insurance firms to help victims, but with strong opposition from such firms, it is doubtful the bill will pass.
How to procure funds to dispose of asbestos also is a problem.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began in 1999 surveying and removing asbestos in Libby, Mont., where more than 200 people are said to have died from diseases caused by asbestos in mines.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office believes that the EPA could finish removing asbestos as early as 2007, but the difficulties in procuring at least 180 million dollars for the work prompted the EPA to backpedal, saying that it would take five to six years to finish the job.
Lawsuits in Japan rising
The number of lawsuits over asbestos-linked diseases appears to be increasing in Japan.
According to a liaison council to discuss countermeasures against asbestos-linked diseases, which comprises citizens groups and labor unions, there have been about 20 such lawsuits. In many cases, victims and their families have filed lawsuits against asbestos product manufacturers seeking compensation.
In the case of a Chiba man who was diagnosed with mesothelioma 12 years after he retired from a company where he worked on heat insulation, his company did not acknowledge the disease was work-related. After the man died, his family sued the company.
In April last year, the Tokyo High Court ordered the company to pay 47 million yen in compensation to the family.
In a 2002 case in which 17 former workers at Yokosuka Naval Base and others filed a group-action lawsuit against the government that hired the workers, the Yokosuka branch of the Yokohama District Court ordered the government to pay 231 million yen.
In another case at a municipal-run day-care center in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, pupils and their parents filed a lawsuit against the ward and a company that the plaintiffs argued caused cancer by using asbestos during repair work. The ward paid 500,000 yen to each pupil after the case was settled out of court.
However, asbestos-linked cases in the United States have been treated as product liability rather than work-related incidents after the U.S. federal appellate court strictly judged asbestos manufacturers' product liability in 1973.
In product liability lawsuits in the United States, a court ruled in favor of the victims, determining there was a causal relation between damage and cause. Following this, there have been numerous cases of lawyers soliciting victims through newspaper advertisements to file class-action lawsuits.
It is unclear whether Japan will emulate the United States, where an increasing number of large lawsuits have shocked the business world.
