With a plethora of new asbestos cases coming to fruition, San Francisco County Superior Court is proposing the creation of a single asbestos department where all discovery, law and motion and case management matters will be heard. Judge Harold Kahn has been tapped to oversee the department.
“A single, unified court will be better able to distinguish frivolous from real asbestos claims, resulting in greater justice for both defendants and plaintiffs,” said Alex Tabarrok, director of research for The Independent Institute. “Moreover, more than half of the awards in asbestos cases have traditionally gone to the lawyers. By speeding up trials and reducing costs, a greater share of awards may flow to truly injured plaintiffs.”
The goal of such a department, according to presiding judge James McBride, is to ensure that cases aren’t endlessly trailing for trial and that they attempt to have cases settle before they use up a jury panel. Wasting jury panels is a concern for San Francisco -- in 2008, asbestos cases consumed 45 percent of jurors summoned for civil trials, according to the court's latest biennial report.
“The sheer volume of asbestos claims is overwhelming many courts,” said Tabarrok. “Moreover, if you watch late night TV, you cannot fail to notice the legions of plaintiffs lawyers trolling for even more mesothelioma cases.”
This has led to an abundance of cases that eat up the court’s time and can be a nuisance to many.
“Asbestos disease can take 30-40 years to manifest, and asbestos was so commonly used in the past that almost anyone can claim contact with it at some point in time,” Tabarrok said. “Moreover, the conditions for establishing disease have been weak to non-existent.”
Having a judge and commissioner managing all the cases, McBride added, will mean the court will be more involved in bringing cases to trial readiness. It also is designed to streamline litigation and would add accountability.
“The only problem with this centralization is that the asbestos issue is national and plaintiffs lawyers have found it easy to forum shop, so when one jurisdiction cottons on to the problems in these cases the lawyers move on to the next jurisdiction,” Tabarrok said. “Thus, San Francisco's reforms may simply end up pushing these cases somewhere else — good for San Francisco, but not a true solution for the U.S. as a whole.”
