April 25, 2005

Senator Diane Feinstein

Re:      Preserve Our Civil Rights, Hold Mass Polluters Accountable, Vote NO on unFAIR Asbestos Bail Out Bill

Dear Senator Feinstein:

My name is Marsha Thomas and I live in Cumming, GA.  My brother-in-law John died on Feb. 13, 2005 from malignant mesothelioma caused by exposure to asbestos.  He lived in a home that had asbestos insulation and as a young person was around it when his uncle, who was in the construction business, brought insulation home.   John always changed the brakes on his car also, which have asbestos in them.  Who would have known that this would kill him? 

John was diagnosed with mesothelioma on his 50^th birthday, in September, 2004.  He lived for 5 months after he was diagnosed.  The pain that John lived with for these 5 months was excruciating.  The pain was so great that he could never lie down, not even to sleep.  He lost 85 lbs and could barely walk.  All of my family searched the web for any shred of information to help him, only to learn that very little research had been done on this cancer and there were very few doctors who could attempt to help him.  He proceeded with one clinical trial which did not help him at all and yet we were told this was the best available.  His cancer spread from one lung to the other.  When we tried in vain to get him into another clinical trial we were told that it had encompassed his heart and that there was nothing anyone could do.  John died on Feb. 13 gasping for breath and in unbelievable pain.  He drowned in all the fluid that accumulated.  How could this have happened and what is anyone doing to help patients like him?  This big smart funny man, who never smoked or drank his entire life, died a horrific death.  My sister is devastated and in shock.  Only when you imagine someone you know, husband, son, daughter going through this pain and diagnosis of a death sentence, through no fault of their own, can you truly know how devastating this is.  Thousands of dollars were spent on the clinical trials, money which my family does not have.  My sister will ask a jury to award damages for all of the medical bills.  The trust fund bill won’t allow her to do that, instead it offers a “one size fits all” number, like humans were as interchangeable as sheep.

The trust fund bill will help the companies, who poisoned John, but it won’t help him or my family survive and it won’t adequately compensate my sister for her loss.  She has filed a civil lawsuit.  The bill would wipe out her lawsuit.  It would wipe out unpaid settlements.  It would void all the work done on her case and confiscate unpaid settlements.  It would abolish the legal system to shield indicted companies like W. R. Grace from accountability.  It would create a massive federal bureaucracy that is empowered to limit pay outs, restrict eligibility criteria and delay compensation if the trust runs dry, which it will.  I don’t expect the corporate-sponsored bureaucracy to be very friendly to asbestos victims.  The more money they pay out, the sooner the trust will go insolvent, and they will be out of a job.

The bill pretends to care about mesothelioma patients, but it doesn’t.  Theoretically, after the government takes away my sister’s case, after nine months, she can re-file her case, and start all over again.  The average survival for mesothelioma patients is nine months.  What does the bill do to help victims survive long enough to resolve their claim?  Out of a $140 billion trust fund, it requires the mass poisoners to spend only about $10 million a year on medical research and treatment.  This is a cruel slap in the face.  The companies who poisoned John will save billions of dollars but they won’t have to plow any of that windfall blood money into cleaning up their mess.  More will die and suffer as the guilty celebrate their government bail out.

I can go on.  The trust fund will not have enough money from the get go.  It will take at least two years for the new federal agency to get up to speed.  Many of the insurance companies and manufacturers are already saying they are unwilling to pay.  Instead of compensating victims, they’ll hire their lawyers to hold up the trust, just as they did with the superfund law, which made lots of defense lawyers rich, but didn’t clean up many toxic waste dumps.  The bill doesn’t spell out who has to contribute and how much.  Foreign insurance companies likely will balk over their bill, and we won’t have any recourse.

To delay the inevitable insolvency, the bill imposes a burden of proof that is far more stringent than the civil courts require.  The bill caps the fee for our attorneys (but does nothing to cap the runaway hourly fees the defense lawyers charge), which will discourage us from appealing bad bureaucratic decisions.  The Administrator will be like a dictator with totalitarian authority to stiffen medical criteria, reduce awards and take his sweet time in declaring the fund insolvent.  The bill forces victims to fight each other for the scraps.  The folks in Libby, Montana will get $400,000 for asbestosis claims, while a person with the same disease will only get $25,000.  This is patently unequal treatment.  The sad truth is there are hundreds of horribly contaminated shipyard, steel mill, refinery and asbestos mining/factory towns where death and disease are rampant (for example, Manville, New Jersey).  And the exposure criteria discriminate against those who were exposed to asbestos after 1976 while remodeling homes, repairing brakes, going to contaminated schools or living next to an asbestos industrial site. 

Who in Washington D.C. decided that the life of every mesothelioma patient was worth $1.1 million?  The government compensated the victims of 911 on average about $1.7 million.  We have enormous medical and hospital bills, but the proposed law does nothing to account for these special damages.  Sadly, the bill allows the administrator to give a little bit more to some claimants (if they are younger than 51 years old), if he can take away money from the older patients (age 65 and up), to make up the difference.  The corporate sinners get to cleanse themselves with token pay-offs and their government accomplices end up compounding the crime by robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Please honor your commitment as a U.S. Senator to serve all of the people and uphold our Constitution.  Most courts do have procedures for expediting the resolution of claims by mesothelioma patients.  [In California, the courts are required to set for trial within four months the case of anyone with a poor prognosis, such as a mesothelioma patient].  If there are problems with the tort system, let’s fix those problems, and not use the few abuses as an excuse to abolish our civil jury system.  A medical criteria bill should be considered, not a bill that rewards the perpetrators of the worse toxic poisoning this country has ever seen.

Please help us.  You are the only one who can!

Sincerely,

 Marsha P. Thomas

• Click here for more letters from asbestos cancer survivors taking action against inhumane asbestos trust/bail out bill (SB 852)