April 20, 2005

Senator Barbara Boxer
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

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

Dear Senator Boxer:

I have malignant mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos.   I have been told by my doctor that I have a very short life span and that my treatment options are extremely limited.  The treatments available are very expensive and could surpass several hundred thousand dollars, money which my family does not have.  I will ask a jury to award damages for my current and future medical bills.  The trust fund bill won’t allow me to do that, instead it offers a “one size fits all” number.

The trust fund bill will help the companies, who poisoned me, but it won’t help me or my family survive and it won’t adequately compensate me for my loss.  I have filed a civil lawsuit.  The bill would wipe out my lawsuit.  It would wipe out unpaid settlements.  It would void all the work done on my 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 case, after nine months, if I am alive, I can re-file my case, and start all over again.  The average survival for mesothelioma patients is nine months.  What does the bill do to help me survive long enough to resolve my 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 me 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.

Sincerely,

Antoinette Vortriede

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