How Much Money Is Your Asbestos Lawsuit Worth?
One of the questions clients ask me very often is how much money their asbestos or mesothelioma lawsuit is worth. That's a question I can never really answer for two reasons. First, it is incredibly unethical for any attorney to tell a client how much the client will receive. If you speak to a lawyer and he or she makes you a promise like that, run away! Second, the answer to the question depends upon many variables, some of which no one knows the answer to at the time the client asks the question.
While I can't give clients a dollar figure, I can tell them how the dollar figure will be reached. I thought I'd write this down to make it easy for current and future clients to understand how the value of an asbestos or mesothelioma lawsuit will be calculated.
Trust Money:
Many companies that used to sell asbestos or allowed their workers to handle asbestos have filed "bankruptcy." I put quotes around the word bankruptcy because what they filed isn't what people normally think of - the companies aren't out of business. For example, the world's biggest supplier of asbestos, Johns-Manville, filed "bankruptcy" in the early 1980's, but today is a multibillion dollar company that is doing very well. These bankruptcies set aside a large amount of money to pay anyone who got sick from asbestos. There are several dozen different trusts I work with. I file legal claims with the trusts, and they determine how much money will be paid out. In general, the sicker a person is, the more money he or she will receive. For example, some trusts were setup to pay $100,000 for a person with mesothelioma, but only $5,000 for a person with asbestosis.
One of the things I do with my clients is determine which trusts they are eligible for. I then gather the necessary medical and legal records and submit claims. I've seen trust payments to clients range from under $10,000 to over $1 million dollars. One thing that's nice is that I can often expedite the trust payments if the person is very sick. While the money doesn't make the sick person well, it at least allows their final memories with their loved ones to be pleasant and free of worries about money.
Asbestos Lawsuit Settlements:
In addition to filing claims with trusts, I can also sue some of the companies that are responsible for causing a client's asbestos illness. Some of these companies prefer to settle matters out of court. For those companies that do settle out of court, the dollar figures will range depending upon how sick the client is and what exactly the company did. For instance, if the company exposed a worker to asbestos for thirty years, they will probably settle for more money than if they only exposed the client for a couple of months. Settlements can range from a few thousand to much larger figures. However, settlements in excess of a million dollars are pretty rare these days.
Asbestos Lawsuit Jury Verdicts:
If a company won't make a reasonable settlement offer (and many don't) then the only option is to go to trial and see how much money a jury will award. This is by far the most unpredictable part of an asbestos lawsuit. Juries can award money for three reasons:
- Economic damages. Economic damages are those that have a fixed price. For example, if someone incurred $50,000 in medical bills, there would be $50,000 in economic damages. Juries do not HAVE to award an injured person any money for economic damages, but if they plan on awarding any money, they usually award at least some economic damages. However, sometimes money awarded for economic damages has to be paid back to someone else. For example, if that $50,000 in medical bills was paid by a health insurance company, the odds are the insurance company will have to be paid back by any economic damages recovered.
- Noneconomic damages. Noneconomic damages have no fixed price and are purely subjective. That includes things like pain and suffering and emotional harm. This is why jury verdicts are so unpredictable. One jury may think that $100,000 is fair to compensate someone who lost a loved one, while other juries may think $1 million is a better number. The only guidance I can give you here is with respect to states with caps on noneconomic damages. Some states, particularly those with Republican-controlled legislatures, put caps on how much money a jury can award in noneconomic damages. If the cap is $500,000, even if the jury awards $5 million dollars, all you'll collect is $500,000.
- Punitive damages. Economic and noneconomic damages are supposed to compensate the injured person. Punitive damages are supposed to punish the defendant. Punitive damages aren't available in all asbestos trials. Again, when juries award punitive damages, they range in dollar value from very small to astronomically large. But just because a jury awards $100 million in punitive damages does NOT mean the plaintiff will collect it. Judges usually reduce punitive damage awards that are very large. A rule of thumb is that an injured person won't receive more than 2-3 times the amount of noneconomic and economic damages. So, if a jury awards $500,000 in economic damages and $500,000 in noneconomic damages, that would be a total of $1 million dollars. It would therefore be rare for the injured person to receive more than $2 or $3 million in punitive damages.
Other factors:
There are several other factors that complicate how much money an asbestos lawsuit is worth. One of them is apportionment of fault. Let's say that I sue companies A, B, and C. A & B settle before trial, so C is the only company left. Even though they've settled, the jury will probably be able to apportion a percentage of responsibility to company A & B. Let's say the jury awards $100,000, and finds each company 33.3% at fault. Company A & B already settled, so they don't have to pay the jury verdict. Company C does, but may only have to pay 33.3%, or $33,333 dollars. In some states, company C might have to pay the full 100%. I'm not going to complicate things any more by telling you why, but I will say that perhaps the most important choice I have to make is to choose which state to file an asbestos lawsuit in. Which state I file in can drastically change the value of the case. What states I'm able to file a lawsuit in depends upon where the injured person worked, and what companies he or she worked for. If you're curious as to which states you might be able to file a lawsuit in, feel free to contact me and I'll help you as best as I can.
Conclusion:
Yes, some people have gotten a lot of money from asbestos lawsuits. But many others have not. I never promise my clients anything other than that I will try my best to recover as much money as I can for them. I make it my policy to be honest, open, and direct with my clients. It's not in anyone's best interest for me to give them unrealistic expectations as to how much their case might be worth. I know some lawyers like to promise the world in order to get the client to sign up right now but that's just not how I prefer to do business.
