Expert witnesses explain to judges and juries how asbestos exposure occurs and what it does to our health.

We know today that asbestos is anything but safe.

However, asbestos production was once a multibillion-dollar industry. Companies across the United States used asbestos for a wide range of purposes. Asbestos was baked, caked, and woven into a variety of products, from vinyl floor tiles to Kent cigarette filters.

During the asbestos industry’s peak, companies extracted and processed nearly 300 million pounds of asbestos annually.

Nobody knows exactly how many workers—in mines, on assembly lines, and in repair shops—were exposed to asbestos. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, though, estimates that 27 million hardworking Americans worked with or around asbestos between 1940 and 1979.

Even now, decades after the E.P.A. proposed its first asbestos ban, countless men, women, and children remain at-risk for asbestos-related disease.

While courts have long since affirmed the rights of victims to obtain compensation from negligent asbestos companies, negotiating a fair settlement or securing a financial judgment is rarely easy.

When asbestos companies and their attorneys refuse to negotiate in good faith, victims must often rely on expert testimony to assert their rights and begin reclaiming their lives.

Comprender el asbesto

Asbestos is a class of naturally-occurring mineral that can be found across the United States.

Every type of asbestos mineral has its own unique characteristics, but they all share certain qualities. All asbestos minerals are, for instance, comprised of thin and separable fibers. These fibers are strong, heat-resistant, and insulative.

However, in spite of their strength, asbestos fibers are extraordinarily flexible. They can be woven into cloth, or combined with other compounds to produce a startling array of industrial goods and consumer products.

After the end of the Second World War, the United States began producing ever-growing quantities of asbestos. It was used to make items including, but not limited to, the following:

Asbestos-containing materials were, for decades, both prevalent and pervasive. They could be found anywhere and everywhere, from store shelves to office buildings and classrooms.

Unfortunately, even after the federal government began taking action against the asbestos industry, change was gradual and hard-won. Many American continued to work with asbestos for years, while many still live with and around it.

Nobody knows exactly how many people were exposed to asbestos over the course of the 20^° century, but the number is likely in the tens of millions.

Los peligros médicos del asbesto

Asbestos was so prized for its strength and resilience that it was once termed a “mineral milagroso."

However, asbestos’s strength is also its greatest weakness.

While many asbestos-containing materials stay stable for years, many eventually crumble under the passage and pressure of time. Crumbled asbestos, or asbestos friable, can aerosolize upon contact, potentially dispersing into the air and scattering across the surrounding environment.

Since aerosolized asbestos particles are microscopic, they are small enough to be inadvertently inhaled. Once inside the body, they can wreak havoc, embedding themselves deep within the lungs and gradually infiltrating other organs.

Asbestos exposure has been associated with medical conditions including, but not limited to, the following:

La Asbestosis

Asbestosis is a respiratory disorder caused by exposure to high levels of asbestos fiber. Over time, these fibers can become trapped in the alveoli, the small air sacs at the end of the airways. Asbestosis is not life-threatening, but it can cause serious symptoms including difficulty breathing, clubbed fingers and toes, and weight loss.

Cáncer

Asbestos fibers embedded in the lungs and other parts of the body can provoke an unnatural and ineffective immune system response. This response can cause both scarring and inflammation and, eventually, abnormal cellular replication. When cells divide uncontrollably, they can form tumors. Asbestos exposure has been linked to many different types of cancer, including cancers of the lungs, esophagus, y ovarios.

Enfermedad Pulmonar Obstructiva Crónica (EPOC)

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a common long condition that causes restricted airflow and other breathing problems. Researchers have found that people who have been exposed to asbestos are diagnosed with COPD at far higher rates than the general population.

Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a rare and unusually aggressive cancer that is almost always caused by asbestos exposure. It affects the pleurae, the membranous lining around the lungs and most other major organs. According to the American Cancer Society, the overall 5-year survival rate for this disease is less than 12%.

Enfermedad pleural

Pleural disease refers to a set of disparate conditions, including pleural plaques and pleural effusions. These conditions can be physically painful and destroy patients’ quality-of-life. While they are not usually life-threatening, they can forewarn more serious complications like mesothelioma.

Asbestos Litigation in the United States

The asbestos industry spent a better part of a century actively denying that its products were anything but safe. Even when confronted with evidence, asbestos companies refused to back down. Instead of reviewing reports, warning workers, or issuing recalls, they sought to suppress emerging research, spending millions to influence Congress and corrupt federal regulators.

However, while the asbestos industry may have publicly maintained its innocence, its highest-level decision-makers had already investigated asbestos’s dangers. They knew, long before their own employees, that asbestos could cause problems far exceeding an uncomfortable cough or difficulty breathing.

Although these multimillion-dollar businesses escaped accountability for the better part of a century, revelations about asbestos’s dangers brought many former asbestos workers to court.

Asbestos-related lawsuits became commonplace in the 1970s and 1980s, with courts quickly determining that asbestos companies had a duty to warn the public of the risks of asbestos exposure.

Since most asbestos companies abrogated this duty by actively suppressing evidence that asbestos was unsafe, courts began issuing rulings against the asbestos industry, saying that many companies must be held liable for the costs of asbestos-related injuries.

Various Ways to Obtain Compensation for Asbestos Claims

Liability is typically enforced through:

Personal injury lawsuits, filed against a negligent asbestos company, such as a product manufacturer, a property developer, or a retailer.
Multidistrict litigation, the practice of collecting multiple lawsuits against the same defendant in a single court.
Fideicomisos de asbesto, dedicated trust funds established by bankrupted asbestos companies for the exclusive benefit of their victims.

Understanding the Different Types of Witnesses in an Asbestos Claim

Courts across the country have long since affirmed that asbestos victims have a right to obtain compensation for their injuries.

However, securing compensation is rarely easy. Even asbestos trusts often demand that claimants submit compelling proof that their injuries were more likely than not caused by exposure to a certain asbestos product or in a particular asbestos-affected workplace.

If an asbestos company or asbestos trust refuses to negotiate in good faith, victims may have to initiate litigation.

While different types of asbestos-related claims must satisfy different criteria to prevail, most victims must be able to establish the following:

The asbestos company owed the victim a duty of care;
The asbestos company violated its duty of care by acting negligently;
The asbestos company’s negligence was the direct or proximal cause of the victim’s injuries; and
The victim suffered cognizable damages that can be compensated by a court.

Most asbestos-related claims that cannot be resolved through pre-trial negotiations proceed to court. The success of a lawsuit is, in many cases, contingent on the quality and quantity of available evidence. This evidence often includes witness testimony.

However, witness testimony can take either of the following forms:

Lay witness testimony. A lay witness is a witness who is not testifying as an expert. They do not need to have any advanced or special knowledge about asbestos, or workplace safety, to offer testimony. However, their testimony is strictly limited to observations of events about which they have direct, personal knowledge.
Expert witness testimony. An expert witness is a person with special knowledge in a particular field, such as medicine or asbestos production. They may draft reports to be used in trial, or they might be asked to offer testimony before a judge and jury.

Expert witness testimony is comparably common in asbestos claims, since experts—like doctors, or industrial specialists—can offer unique insight into how victims may have been exposed to asbestos, and how their lives could change as a result.

The Role of Expert Witnesses in Asbestos Claims

Expert witnesses can assist in asbestos litigation by:

Informing the court as to how an asbestos-related illness was caused;
Providing insight on time-period-specific industrial safety practices, manufacturing procedures, or even scientific principles; and
Assessing an asbestos victim’s injuries, and determining how a diagnosis could affect their long-term quality-of-life or odds of survival.

However, just as there are different categories of witnesses, there are different types of expert witnesses, too.

In most cases, expert witnesses in asbestos claims are typically either of the following:

Consulting Experts

A consulting expert is an expert who is retained by an attorney before a lawsuit is ever filed. Consulting experts may be hired to:

Analyze theoretical models
Review medical literature and other scientific evidence
Assess a claim’s overall chances of success

Since consulting experts are usually retained before litigation begins, they are not expected to testify at trial. In fact, they are often explicitly forbidden from doing so.

Testifying Experts

A testifying expert is an expert who is hired to present evidence before a judge and jury.

Their evidence could be presented by the victim’s attorney in the form of a report, or it may be delivered, live and in person, by the expert themselves.

Since testifying experts must meet certain standards, their identities have to be divulged to the defendant’s counsel before trial ever begins. It is therefore common for the other side’s legal team to try to challenge an expert witness’s qualifications and methodologies.