How Mesothelioma Claims Work And What Families Need

Episode summary

Attorney Paul Danziger explains how mesothelioma claims actually work, starting with the misconception he hears most: that there is one big asbestos trust fund. He traces the history back to the Johns Manville bankruptcy in the 1980s, when a corporation facing thousands of claims set aside a portion of its assets in a trust to pay future claimants and then emerged to continue operating. Other companies followed, and today more than 30 separate trusts hold roughly $30 billion, but a claimant has to have been exposed to that specific company's product to recover from that specific trust. Danziger explains why nearly every case involves multiple defendants, since most people who worked around asbestos encountered many different products over a career, and why claims typically target the manufacturers who knew the danger and concealed it rather than the employer. He walks through the difference between a personal injury lawsuit and a wrongful death claim, and notes that some trusts can pay within 30 to 90 days.

Key takeaways

Source: Paul Danziger, speaking in this episode.

• There is no single asbestos trust, more than 30 separate trusts exist, and eligibility depends on exposure to each company's product.
• Most claims involve multiple defendants because most workers encountered many asbestos products over a career.
• Claims usually target the manufacturers who concealed the danger, not the employer the person worked for.
• Some trust claims can pay out within 30 to 90 days, which matters when a family needs help quickly.

Terms explained in this episode

Pathology report

Paul Danziger describes it as a dissection of the lining of the lung that shows a mesothelioma diagnosis, and calls it the key document needed to recover compensation from bankruptcy trusts and defendants.

Take-home exposure

Exposure to asbestos fibers carried home on a worker's clothing, where family members, including children, inhaled the fibers without any direct occupational contact with asbestos products.

Asbestos bankruptcy trust fund

A fund created when an asbestos company files for bankruptcy, setting aside a portion of its assets to pay future claims from people exposed to its products, then emerging as an ongoing corporation with the remaining assets.

Wrongful death claim

A legal claim brought by a surviving spouse or family member when the person who had mesothelioma passes away, separate from a personal injury lawsuit that the diagnosed individual would bring while living.

Full transcript

Welcome And Meet Paul

You're listening to MESO, the Mesothelioma podcast, where support, education, and outreach come together for families facing mesothelioma.

Hi, good afternoon. This is Anna, and I have a super sweet guest uh here today, and his name is Paul Danzinger. He's actually the person that um is organizing this website for those um that are looking for educational information or any information that would help them as they go through the process of mesothelioma. Um so, Paul, um tell me a

Why This Work Became Personal

little bit about you. When did you start doing all this?

So I graduated from law school in 1993 and uh practiced general practice litigation, did all kinds of cases, uh, a lot of litigation, got some cases that were nationally written up in CNN, New York Times, tried some cases, and eventually I met an individual who was diagnosed with mesothelioma, and we he asked us what we could do for him, and more importantly for his family, really, because he knew he was very sick and he had been a hard-working individual, had worked for years and years in a plant uh in Texas City, which is kind of near Houston, and had provided for his family and wanted to continue to do everything possible that he could to provide for his family, and was a kind of a little bit at a dead end, knew that he had some sort of climb, but didn't know how and where and what to do. And we kind of helped him walk through that process. And that was like 26 years ago. So we've been doing industrial disease cases, asbestos, mesothelioma, lung cancer cases, silicosis cases, where people are exposed to dangerous airborne products and developed uh diseases. And we help them recover compensation for them so they can use it for medical expenses, for living expenses, to enjoy it while they can. Uh and, you know, and also for their family, because that's super, super important for a lot of people, right? And uh, you know, and so we've been doing that uh for tw 26 years now. It's hard to believe. It's hard to believe how long it is.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, a lot of times when people get that diagnosis of mesothelioma or lung cancer, um, you know, one of their biggest concerns is their family. You know, they they plan to retire, and and here we are dealing with this cancer um that for the most part, and as much as you hate saying it, they may not survive. Correct. So um one of the biggest questions that we initially get, or not so much a question.

How Asbestos Trust Funds Actually Work

Um, one of the things that we uh when we get a call from an individual that's been diagnosed with mesothelioma is, you know, this trust fund. And they think it's one huge trust fund, $30 billion trust fund. Can you explain to me?

So, so back, it's it's it's been so long, it's amazing. So uh back in the 1980s, there was a well-known, and probably everyone's heard of it, asbestos company, and that was the John Mansell Company. And John Mansell had thousands and thousands of claims because it was probably the most widely used asbestos product. And they were facing thousands and thousands of claims, and so they filed for bankruptcy. And it's not like me and you, we file for bankruptcy, you know, we're in a world of a world of hurt, and we are liquefying things and doing stuff like that. When a big corporation like that files for bankruptcy, what they do is they take a certain amount of their assets, the money that the company is worth, and they put it in a trust fund, okay? And they go into bankruptcy and they put the money in a trust fund. And then they come out of bankruptcy. So they say they had uh a hundred million or billion dollars, they would put maybe 50% in the Susbestis trust fund and leave those assets or stock or whatever there to pay future claims. And then what they would do is come out of bankruptcy with the remaining assets, continue to being an ongoing corporation manufacturing or whatever they're manufacturing, and go along with their business. So they did it back in the 80s, and that was the first asbestos bankruptcy trust, and they put a lot of money aside to pay claims. And eventually other corporations saw what they had done successfully to deal with their asbestos exposure and their asbestos liability, and they set up their own trust funds. And so went from one to two to three, and so now they're 30-plus asbestos trust funds. And when you pull all those trust funds together, it's you know $30 billion worth of money that's available to pay people who've been exposed to asbestos, and you have to be exposed to that corporation's product. Right. Okay. You can't just make a claim if you want exposed to that corporation's product. And they've been paying out, depending on the trust, for you know, it's close to 40 years, depending on which trust. And so that money is available. And one of the reasons we really like some of these trust funds is we're able to get, in many circumstances,

Why Claims Often Involve Many Companies

compensation for individuals and their families within, you know, 30 to 90 days for some of those trust funds. And the interesting thing about asbestos litigation, mesothelioma asbestos litigation, is you're not suing one defendant. You almost always sue multiple defendants. So you you you because most people who worked around asbestos, they weren't just exposed to one asbestos products during the course of their career. They're exposed to multiple products when they worked, and they were exposed to cosmetic products. And so these individuals can recover compensation for multiple different asbestos funds. Right. Right. As well as most and as well as solvent defendants.

Right. So it's cumulative, and I think most people think that they're just filing against one trust fund. It's never one trust fund. Rarely is it ever one trust fund. We have, it could be anywhere from one to 15 different trust funds, depending on the exposure. So one of the things is who is le legally liable when a person is exposed to asbestos? Because sometimes they're confused about is it the company? Um, but a lot of times it isn't the company, it's the product that was being used. So can you Right.

So uh a lot of sometimes people say to us, I don't want to sue my employer. I worked there 40 years, he was a good guy, that kind of stuff. As a general rule, okay, we very rarely sue the employer. Okay. Often the employers didn't know that the asbestos products were um were dangerous, and they didn't, you know, they didn't have notify notification. The asbestos companies knew they were dangerous. They kept that information hidden back from even the 1930s. They knew it, but they wanted to sell the asbestos product, make as much money as possible, and by the time the salesman, you know, by the time everyone figured this out, the salesmen were long gone from the company. They had pocketed the money and they were off. So usually we are going after the asbestos manufacturers, the people that made the asbestos products, whether it be the raw asbestos or the products that included finished asbestos in them, pipe, insulation, those type of things. And we are seeking recovery from them for the families. And that's almost always the case. They sometimes can never say always in the law, like everything else. So there are always exceptions, but generally that's who we're going after.

Personal Injury Vs Wrongful Death

Okay. And so tell me the difference between a personal injury lawsuit and a wrongful death claim.

That's a good question. And so um uh basically a personal injury lawsuit, like the name says, is uh the injury that happens to the person. So if you have the person, if you are the person who has mesothelioma, you have a personal injury case against the various asbestos manufacturers. However, if unfortunately you pass away, your spouse would have a wrongful death lawsuit against the companies. So basically, the the legislator uh has said, you know, just because you pass away doesn't mean those around you don't have a claim for the wrong that was done to you. And so that's very important. The whole idea of injury lawsuits are prefaced upon the fact that you were injured. And you can't you can recover if it's just an accident, right? If if something happened, you can't really recover unless there was negligence or knowing malfeasance. So basically with the asbestos cases, and this is why often the verdicts and the settlements are so high, is the asbestos companies knew it was dangerous and they kept it hidden. And that's why juries, when they see the documents, and we could be happy to share the documents with you, they're outraged. Like, how could you do this to another human being? How could you make an individual who's working hard and usually working in industrial or you know, how could you do this to them without even warning them? If they warn you and say, hey, this could cause cancer down the line, that's a different story. You wouldn't have a claim. But they didn't, they kept it hidden. So that's that's part of it. The other thing I think is super important to talk about.

Hidden Asbestos In Everyday Products

10, 15 years ago, we used to get many times it was woman, and they'd say, I have mesothelioma. And we'd be like, Did you work in a plant? No. Were you exposed to asbestos? We're on brake pads, no. Uh Did your father work in a plant and bring home his clothes and shake him out and you were exposed to him? No. And we couldn't, for the life of us, we couldn't figure out how this person, usually woman, got mesothelioma. Okay, and there were all these theories. What's come out over the last five to ten years is cosmetic products that women used, baby powder, that white stuff every one of our parents, every one of our parents used on us on some occasion. Some people used it more than other. Contained asbestos. Can you believe one of the I mean, baby powder? Yeah. I mean, that was like the safest product known to man, we thought back then, contained asbestos. And that being put on babies, a lot of women used it on their private parts every day, especially in the south, because it was hot and humid, caused, you know, this horrible disease. And the companies knew it and they didn't.

Didn't hear anything about it. Didn't warn you, didn't tell you anything about that. Um, so you you kind of touched. Um, you said baby powder, but you also mentioned something about family bringing

Take-Home Exposure And Long Latency

at home. Can you tell me a little bit about secondhand exposure? I think they also call it take-home exposure.

Sure. Sure, sure, sure. So I did touch on that. So oftentimes you'd when we were speaking to individuals, they'd say, no, you know, I'm an accountant, or no, I have work as a teacher, or some other job that was not exposed to asbestos. And when you do a little digger deeping, and you, you know, dig a little bit deeper, what you find out their father, their uncle, somebody that lived with them worked in a plant. And he'd come home and his little baby girl would run up to him and throw her hands around him and give him a hug when he came home. And he was covered around he was covered in asbestos product. And maybe he didn't get mesothelioma, but she, as a young lady, breathed in those fibers. And it's microscopic fiber. It lodges in the lining of your lung. Mesothelioma is, you know, a cancer of the lining of the lung, lodges, and it just sticks there. Just one fiber can do it. And you hug your father every day, you got more than one fiber. And 20, 30, 40, 50 years later, that tiny strand of asbestos metastasizes, and and you know, you get me, Sothelium. So fortunately. And that's one of the things that's very important, is you have to dig. You have to dig to find out how you were exposed to asbestos, what were the products used, where were they used, that kind of stuff.

And that's kind of um what we do as um as the people call in and they ask, because a lot of times, you know, they think it's one thing, and as we're talking to them, uh, you know, we start, they start realizing, oh, wait, you know, this is what, this is how I was exposed. We had um an individual that was diagnosed that, you know, we were talking about, you know, their diagnosis, and then we find out that when their parents removed um uh fiberglass, not fiberglass, the insulation from their uh attic and they put it out in the front, the kids were playing it. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, you didn't think about, you know, that product um having asbestos and it was like a toy.

Well, what the craziest thing is there are some products they sold fake snow for Christmas. Oh, yes. That was made purely out of asbestos, and we're not talking about a few microscopic fibers of smoke, of asbestos. This was like spread out the asbestos fiber around your Christmas presents so your kids can breathe it in. Yeah. I mean, just horrible. So you got that, you got it in canned cigarettes, you got it in unfortunately cosmetic telc that a lot of women use. You got it in a million different, not a million, you got it in a lot of different products that people used at home. In addition to, you know, ceiling tile, floor tile, insulation in the pipes. It's just a lot of exposure.

Quite a bit,

The Medical Record That Matters Most

quite a bit. So what type of when when you're filing a mesothelioma case, what type of medical documents do you need in order to file a case? Aaron Ross Powell Right.

So the most important thing and is we need a pathology report, right? A pathology report is a dissection of the lining of the lung that shows that you have mesothelioma, that you've been diagnosed with mesothelioma. And we need to get that as quickly as possible, right? Because one thing we understand is, you know, time is never on any of our sides, but when you get sick, time is less on your side, and there's a lot of stuff piling up, medical decisions. And so we want to get that case filed as quickly as possible so we can start getting compensation for you as quickly as possible. We need that pathology report because we will need it to get money from the bankruptcy trusts, from the defendants. So that's kind of like the key document we really need. Now, you know, sometimes it might take a little longer. We'll take the case, we'll start working it up, and we will work uh to get that pathology report uh as quickly as possible. And we can facilitate that too.

Right. So yeah. So if you don't have a pathology report on hand, it's not like we can't. We will do the research, we will pull the medical records so that you don't have to deal with that. But one of the other things uh I wanted to ask, um, how how do you um how do attorneys prove

Proving Exposure From Long Ago

causation? So how do they know what product um was used in certain areas? Because it was so long ago. Right.

Right. So many clients ask this question oh, I worked with asbestos 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. I I know I did, I can't remember, or sometimes I just didn't do it, I didn't use it. So there are lots of ways. We have people on our team, that's that's their job. They've spent their whole career analyzing how individuals were exposed to asbestos. Now, for many big companies, they kept pretty good track record of where they sold asbestos. So if you worked in a plant and you may have not even been on the line, you may not have been cutting the pipe, you may have been up in the counting as a secretary in accounting, or you may have been, you know, a driver that drove through this plant once a week or once every two weeks, and you didn't even know it was filled with asbestos. We will go ahead and we will pull your work records and we will look to see where you worked along the way. Okay? That's one of the reasons. And other uh one of the reasons. Another way is we will look at your naval, your veterans, your military history to see where you were you worked. Another way we do it is we will look to find co-workers that may have worked with you, and they can come testify to what products you worked around. The other thing we do is we have picture books of asbestos products. And these asbestos products, uh you know, when you can't remember the name, but if you worked around a product, you see the picture of the bag, the pipe, the whatever the case. You're like, oh yeah, that's a product I worked with many, many years ago. And then lastly, you know, because we've been doing this for like 26 years, our team has a database of clients from your area probably, who've identified stuff that we can examine, investigate. So that kind of is the way. We have people who've been doing this their whole career. They know the asbestos products because that's what they've done for 20, 30, 40 years, and they know how to find out what you were exposed to.

Who Qualifies, Cost, And Why File

So if someone's been diagnosed with the mesothelia, is there any reason why they would not qualify for the trust fund? I guess my question is because there are calls where, well, I don't know, so I'm not gonna, you know, I don't think that I can file. Um but I I know that in the past, when we've had individuals that have been diagnosed, we've been able to find the phone.

I mean, I would I can't say always, but I can say I can't think of a single case where if somebody's been diagnosed with mesothelium, that we're not able to get you some money, right? Now, obviously the more exposure and the more defendants, the more money you're gonna get. Right. But we almost always get money. And give us a call. We'll do the research and the examination. It's not gonna cost you anything. No upfront fees or expenses. But I I really think you got to uh look into it for yourself, right? Okay. For your family, okay. And on some level, for just the gin the the the idea that there needs to be a remedy for wrong and obtaining compensation from somebody, whether you need the money or want the money, it sends a message to corporations that you did the wrong thing, you have to pay for your bad deeds. And unless you do that, and if if no one does it, then the corporations have no incentive not to do bad deeds. So we're talking about asbestos. But there are plenty of examples of corporations over the last many, many years who've done bad acts. And unless we have this disincentive, this penalty for them, they'll just keep doing it. Right. Okay. And so it's really important for your family, for you, for society as a whole to pursue a claim and a cause of action.

Aaron Powell So there's a question someone wanted me to ask you is age an issue? So if I were really young, diagnosed with mesophilioma, or really old, does that change anything?

Aaron Powell You know, it doesn't change the liability, right? You were exposed to whether you're old and you were exposed to this particular product 50 years ago, or you're young and exposed to this product five years ago, the liability would still be the same against the corporation. But the reality is juries and people are gonna look at a young person and say, you know, his life was potentially cut short, or he's gonna have to have medical treatment from 30 to 50, 70, 80, as opposed to somebody's 85, you you might not get as much if you if you're older. And that's just that's just the reality of how juries perceive cases and everyone wants to perceive cases. And I think, you know, as I get older, maybe I think less fair, but I do think that is pretty a fairer way to do it, right? Um and um I remember many years ago I had uh a guy I represented, we went out to meet with him in his home, and um he had been at I think Iwo Jima and survived. Oh wow. He'd been on the ship uh full of asbestos, been on the beach in Iwo Jima, which was, you know, I think if we all know our history, that was a tough place to be in, survived. And then he got asbestos when he was like 85 or something, uh mesothelioma. I was talking to him about it, and he kind of said, Look, you know, I'm kind of angry that I got mesothelioma, but I did make it through past Iogima. So maybe I consider myself lucky. So you know what I'm saying? It's you know, when you look at this, this, the, the, you know, the whole arc of life, and that's it just struck me. Just because that was kind of he was kind of part of history.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So appreciate you answering all my questions and what you do.

Yeah, well, thank you. Because I mean, I I just tell a little bit about Anna. She she has not had an easy life. Okay. I mean, I've known her for many, many years, and she has gone through cancer with l a loved one, a husband, right? And she took care of him the whole time. The whole time, and she went through that and she s survived, and she went on with her life, and she flourished, she has kids, she has grandkids now. Yes. But I think if you ever need to talk to anyone, there's no more empathetic, kind, nice person than Anna, and she's been through it. The person she she loved and was a husband, didn't have any sort of, but he had cancer and he went through hell. Yeah, he did. He did. He did, and she went through hell with him. So, Anna, I think that's why you're drawn to this kind of work. And um, thank you for what you do.

Well, I thank you for your time. I thank you for helping me through this process of of of trying to show people or educate people on you know what we go through uh or what we need in order to process a case. Thank you.

Thanks, Anna.

Thank you for listening to MESO, the Mesothelioma podcast. For more information, resources, and support, visit our sponsors Danziger and Dayano at dandel.com.

Frequently asked questions

Source: Paul Danziger, speaking in this episode.

Sources

• Pathology report: Pathology Reports, National Cancer Institute
• Take-home exposure: Asbestos Exposure and Cancer Risk, National Cancer Institute
• Wrongful death claim: Wrongful death action, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School

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