Costs of Asbestos Litigation

This report examines the money spent to resolve asbestos-related injury lawsuits: who pays it, who receives it, and for what purposes. After sketching the tangled context in which spending occurs for asbestos product liability litigation in the introduction, subsequent sections analyze the actual costs incurred by plaintiffs, defendants, and insurers in the course of processing asbestos suits to resolution. The analysis focuses on net compensation (money received by injured persons after deducting litigation expenses), and on defense and plaintiff expenses (money paid to operate the legal and insurance systems through which society decides who should receive how much compensation and arranges for actual payment). Finally, the authors total the expenditures and examine the ratio between litigation expense payments and net compensation (the "overhead" costs incurred in generating one dollar in payment to an injured person).