On Corporate Accountability: Lead, Asbestos, and Fossil Fuel Lawsuits

Our plain-English summary of On Corporate Accountability: Lead, Asbestos, and Fossil Fuel Lawsuits, by C. Shearer (New Solutions, 2015).

The study

• Author: C. Shearer
• Journal: New Solutions
• Published: 2015;25(2):172-88
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

This paper examines the use of lawsuits against three industries that were eventually found to be selling products damaging to human heath and the environment: lead paint, asbestos, and fossil fuels. These industries are similar in that some companies tried to hide or distort information showing their products were harmful. Common law claims were eventually filed to hold the corporations accountable and compensate the injured. This paper considers the important role the lawsuits played in helping establish some accountability for the industries while also noting the limitations of the lawsuits. It will be argued that the lawsuits helped create pressure for government regulation of the industries' products but were less successful at securing compensation for the injured. Thus, the common law claims strengthened and supported administrative regulation and the adoption of industry alternatives more than they provided a means of legal redress.

© The Author(s) 2015.

In plain English

This article was not a medical study. It was a policy analysis comparing lawsuits against three United States industries as case studies: lead paint, asbestos, and fossil fuels. Drawing on published histories and court decisions, the author argued that some companies in each industry tried to hide or deny evidence that their products were harmful. For asbestos, the article recounted that the industry suppressed the results of studies showing asbestosis. It also recounted that plaintiff lawyers later used legal discovery to obtain internal company documents known as the "Sumner Simpson Papers." The article described a federal court blocking the Environmental Protection Agency's 1989 attempt to ban asbestos. It also described asbestos company bankruptcies: seventeen more after Johns-Manville in the 1980s, another twenty-four in the 1990s, and eighty by 2008. The author wrote that asbestos suits secured compensation for some of the injured, but many claims ended in out-of-court settlements and the funds were often insufficient. The author concluded that the lawsuits supported government regulation, and for lead paint and asbestos the adoption of industry alternatives, more than they provided legal redress for the injured.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Policy and legal analysis using comparative case studies (historical review of industry conduct and lawsuits); no original health data
• Who was studied: Lawsuits brought by public and private parties against the lead paint, asbestos and fossil fuel industries in the United States, described from the early twentieth century to 2014
• Exposure: Products of three industries: lead paint, asbestos, and fossil fuels. The asbestos section does not name specific fiber types.
• Main results:
  • For asbestos, the article recounted, citing published histories, that the industry suppressed the results of studies showing asbestosis rather than warning workers
  • Through legal discovery, plaintiff lawyers obtained release of internal asbestos industry documents known as the Sumner Simpson Papers
  • A federal court of appeals blocked the Environmental Protection Agency's 1989 attempt to ban asbestos altogether
  • After Johns-Manville's 1982 bankruptcy, seventeen more companies filed for bankruptcy in the 1980s, another twenty-four in the 1990s, and eighty by 2008, as the article reports
  • The author wrote that asbestos suits secured compensation for some of the injured, but many claims were resolved through out-of-court settlements and the funds were often insufficient
  • Across the three industries, the author argued that the lawsuits were generally more successful at addressing mitigation of harm, through pressure for regulation, than at securing damages
  • No climate change lawsuit against fossil fuel companies had secured damages, and so far only one claim had succeeded against lead manufacturers (a 2014 Santa Clara ruling of $1.1 billion, under appeal)
• The authors' conclusion: The author argued that the common law claims supported administrative regulation and the adoption of industry alternatives (for lead paint and asbestos) more than they provided a means of legal redress for the injured

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis.

Related studies

• Global corporate policies and international "double standards" in occupational and environmental health — B. Castleman (1999)
• With the best intentions: lead research and the challenge to public health — D. Rosner, G. Markowitz (2012)
• Corporate corruption of medical literature: asbestos studies concealed by W.R. Grace & Co — D. Egilman, W. Wallace, et al. (1998)
• Industry responsibility for the use of its products — P. Kotin (1979)
• Corporate influence on threshold limit values — B.I. Castleman, G.E. Ziem (1988)
• Occupational respiratory cancer and exposure to asbestos: a case-control study in a cohort of workers in the electricity and gas industry — E. Imbernon, M. Goldberg, et al. (1995)

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