(The Associated Press circulated the following on April 24.)
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers said Tuesday they plan to push ahead with legislation to ban asbestos liability lawsuits in exchange for a $140 billion trust fund despite lingering opposition from some interest groups.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter and the panel’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, want the committee to vote on their bill this week while they try to resolve complaints raised by business, labor and other interest groups.
”What we’re facing essentially is whether the current system, which is wrack and ruin, is preferable to … what we have in this legislation,” said Specter, R-Pa.
Supporters of the bill say asbestos liability is driving companies out of business and leaving victims with little or no money for medical bills. A trust fund would speed money to those people and assure companies that they would not be sued out of existence, the supporters say.
The legislation would require insurers and business groups to put $140 billion into a trust fund for asbestos victims. In return for payments from the trust fund, the asbestos victims would give up their right to sue.
The Judiciary Committee could vote on the legislation as early as Thursday.
In testimony before the panel, former three-term Michigan Governor John Engler, now president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said the bill represents ”a major step forward in the decades-long push for asbestos legislation.”
But some insurance groups have refused to sign on the bill. Specter and Leahy’s legislation ”still retains many provisions that are dangerous for insurers, and falls well short of our threshold for supporting trust fund legislation,” said Craig Berrington, lawyer for the American Insurance Association.
Labor unions are also split. The AFL-CIO is opposed, with president John Sweeney saying in a statement last week, ”We will oppose any effort to take away the rights of asbestos victims to go to court without establishing a workable system to ensure just and timely compensation.”
But the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the UAW, endorsed the bill Tuesday.
”The UAW firmly believes that the no-fault asbestos compensation system established under the Specter-Leahy bill would be vastly preferable to the current tort system,” said Alan Reuther, the UAW’s legislative director.