Orrin Hatch: “I rise in support of S. 2290, the bipartisan Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act, appropriately called the FAIR…”

“I rise in support of S. 2290, the bipartisan Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act, appropriately called the FAIR Act. Let me talk about the problems for a minute. I think I am stating the obvious, but it bears repeating. Our country is faced with an asbestos litigation crisis of unparalleled magnitude. Something is terribly wrong when asbestos victims who suffer from debilitating injuries recover mere pennies on the dollar while people who are not sick and never have been sick a day in their lives from asbestos recover millions. Something is terribly wrong when scores of companies, many which never produced a shred of asbestos fiber, are forced into bankruptcy triggering lost jobs and depleting pensions for those who lost their jobs. Something is terribly wrong when the only real winners in the current system are the handful of personal injury lawyers who walk to the bank with billions of dollars in fees. Members may have heard the statistics before, but I will say them again so that everyone knows the scope of the problem facing this country. According to the Rand Institute for Civil Justice, more than 730,000 people have filed claims, with a sharp increase in filing in the last 10 years. More than one million claims are expected to be filed in the near future. The Rand study states the reason for this dramatic rise in claims is that through the 1980s, claims were filed only by the manifestly ill.…”