The first edition of the AEI Liability Outlook is out today, and features my analysis of pending asbestos legislation:
The AEI Liability Project hereby inaugurates its Liability Outlook series, designed to guarantee a paper trail to exclude any of its authors from Article III appointments. This Outlook examines the congressional attempts at asbestos liability reform. The eventual cost of asbestos litigation is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the majority of which will end up in the hands of attorneys, thus affecting thousands of corporate defendants with little or no culpability and costing tens of thousands of jobs. The trust-fund approach is a congressional attempt to reach a compromise on the liability problem, so long as nationwide reform is not politically feasible. While a trust fund has the potential to save tens of billions of dollars, the current legislation suffers from dangerous flaws that could make the cost of the asbestos litigation crisis far worse.
Other Point of Law coverage of S. 852. (Cross-posted at Point of Law.)
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