It would always be convenient to have an asbestos lawsuit info guide to help asbestos class action lawsuit complainants and their families through the maze of legal options that are available to them. Most of these suits are filed against large corporations that made a decision not to inform its employees that the production plants and work areas they occupied were prime health hazards for those who were exposed to asbestos.

In most cases, an asbestos law suit arises after a worker has been exposed for many years (sometimes as many as 20-plus years) to dust, fibers, and other air particles that travel through their nasal passages and get into their lungs. One Maryland-based major company (W.R. Grace) that has been noted as a culprit in asbestos litigation has been estimated to have created from $385 million to over $6 billion in damages to its employees.

Since filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company has agreed to place $3 billion into a trust fund for asbestos claims for past, present and future asbestos lawsuits. Claimants can file for restitution until 2034. Grace employs more than 6,400 people worldwide, and it makes building materials like insulation where asbestos has had a prevalent harmful presence in the past.

The most common claim in almost most asbestos class action law suits is that exposure to the material damaged the lungs of workers and was the targeted cause of a fatal cancer. W.R. Grace has contended that many of the asbestos lawsuits it faces were done by attorneys doing mass screenings, which they claim have a much higher indication of cancer and lung damage than those done in settings that are clinical. The company has gone on the record to challenge many of the lawsuits by claiming they are bogus.

Grace has made history with these disputes. The suits represent one of the first times in asbestos law that a defending company has been allowed to try to prove that a large number of claimants (thousands) have illegitimate cases. The outcomes of those cases still will not erase the idea that the government still intends to consider criminal charges against the company as well.

If someone were to create an asbestos lawsuit info guide, it would have to include the multitude of lessons to be learned (and those still unfolding) from the W.R. Grace case. The most important lesson is that if you are a company who knows something is endangering employees in your facility; you have a moral, civic, and legal responsibility to both inform those employees and to act sensibly toward correcting the problem. The most important lesson for complainants? Do not ever pad the truth about an illness and assume the defending company will not challenge your claims.