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Kansas state lawmakers recently took up debate in the legislature’s upper house over the passage of House Bill 2457, a law that could end up imposing serious restriction on the legal rights of asbestos cancer victims to recover vital compensation following a mesothelioma diagnosis. If approved, the bill would require mesothelioma patients to undertake a lengthy administrative and investigative process that could go beyond the time they have left.

In February 2018, the Kansas State House of Representatives passed their version of the bill with a 77-40 vote over the objections of advocates who claim the bill is necessary and places roadblocks to justice. House Bill 2457 is Supported by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, a statewide business and industrial coalition in the state of Kansas that often creates pro-business legislation.

If passed, House Bill 2457 would require asbestos cancer victims to file all possible claims against other defendants in a 30-day window, allowing a jury to consider shared liability among sources of asbestos exposure. Often times, this includes filing administrative claims with asbestos bankruptcy trusts in lieu of formal lawsuits against solvent companies still doing business.

The treatment options for mesothelioma have remained pretty constant throughout the last decade. Because of the aggressive nature of the cancer and number of cases discovered each year, new treatments are difficult to test.

Currently, the best-known option for fighting this cancer is chemotherapy. Unfortunately, chemotherapy’s effectiveness is different for each person.

However, a new article in the Oncology Nurse Advisor explores the role of radiation therapy in treating mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is a serious disease with far-reaching consequences. Treatments can be expensive and time-intensive.

There are options available to victims of mesothelioma, and your situation could warrant taking legal action.

An experienced mesothelioma attorney can help you throughout the process, including:

An intermediate appeals court in New York recently denied a motion brought forth by a group of asbestos product related companies attempting to challenge the types of damages cancer victims can recover and the state’s special asbestos court system as a whole. The appeal comes a year after the courts modified their case management orders to allow plaintiffs to recover punitive damages in mesothelioma cancer lawsuits and less than one month after a state jury handed down a record breaking $60 million plaintiff’s verdict.

The special asbestos court, known as the New York Court of Asbestos Litigation (NYCAL), is one of the country’s largest backlog of asbestos cancer cases and has created its own unique rules to help move along cases on the docket. One of those case management orders was an agreement with defendants to defer punitive damages in exchange for waivers of due process rights to allow cases to move more quickly through the courts.

Punitive damages are a special type of award meant to punish defendants for especially egregious conduct and serve as a type of warning to prevent other entities from engaging in similarly reckless behavior. The agreement between the asbestos companies and the courts had remained in place for almost two decades until 2014 when punitive damages were reintroduced by a Manhattan Supreme Court justice.

An asbestos cancer trial recently got under way in Circuit Court in Illinois over allegations thst the defendants knew about the asbestos contained in their products but did nothing to warn the plaintiff or others about the risk of asbestos exposure. The lawsuit names Iowa-Illinois Taylor Insulation, Inc. as the only remaining defendant in the case and seeks to recover compensation for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other damages. As is common in many asbestos cancer lawsuits, the defendants would rather take their case to trial than accept responsibility for their negligence.

According to the asbestos cancer lawsuit, filed in St. Clair County, Illinois, the plaintiff began working for Iowa-Illinois Taylor Insulation soon after graduating high school in 1968, making a career out of it. The company was in the business of installing various types of insulation, including asbestos insulation, fiberglass insulation, foam insulation, and eventually asbestos abatement for other companies.

The asbestos cancer lawsuit claims that the defendant improperly removed asbestos at the company’s work site after investigators from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigators determined the asbestos insulation covering pipes at the facility posed a health risk to workers. Testimony from one witness for the plaintiff claimed that Iowa-Illinois Taylor Insulation left behind large amounts of carcinogenic debris, which forced the evacuation of the facility on at least one occasion.

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