His conclusion was based on a U.K. database that showed asbestosis was quite rare.
As well as asbestosis, there lurks the fear of tobacco claims in America, Lloyd's biggest market.
With these came a less visible but potentially vastly greater disaster: American tort lawyers' discovery of asbestosis.
The jury verdict represents a rare victory for companies fighting what they consider to be fraudulent asbestosis claims.
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The company identified hundreds of cases where Harron had initially found the patients clear of asbestosis, then switched his diagnosis.
FORBES: Law Firm Hit With $429,000 Verdict Over Faked Asbestos Suits
It presented 11 of those cases at trial, along with testimony of physicians that the plaintiffs had no evidence of asbestosis.
FORBES: Law Firm Hit With $429,000 Verdict Over Faked Asbestos Suits
Mr Private had undergone a triple heart by-pass and had been diagnosed with asbestosis in the 1990s, the inquest at Eastbourne Magistrates' Court heard.
Used as a fire retardant in buildings, asbestos fibres can cause the fatal lung cancer mesothelioma, and the scarring of the lungs, known as asbestosis.
The NSI lawsuit alleges physicians changed their diagnosis from asbestosis to silicosis--essentially negating the basis for the prior asbestos payment--after being paid by lawyers to do so.
When one dogged Texas judge actually demanded that silicosis plaintiffs supply their Social Security numbers, it turned out thousands of them had already received benefits for asbestosis.
"My research suggests something like 90% of the last 200, 000 to 300, 000 asbestosis claims that have been paid are bogus, " says Lester Brickman, a professor at Yeshiva University's law school.
In other large product-liability cases, such as cigarettes or asbestos, there seems to be a well-established link between the products and a specific disease, such as asbestosis or lung cancer.
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Exposure to its tiny fibers, particularly over a period of time, can lead to asbestos-related diseases that include lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, according to the U.S. National Institutes for Health.
The process generated a suspiciously high percentage of diagnoses of asbestosis and related injuries, said Lester Brickman, a professor at Cardozo University School of Law who has written extensively about asbestos litigation.
It was just such a matching exercise that uncovered a brewing scandal in Mississippi and Texas, where plaintiff lawyers filed thousands of lawsuits claiming silicosis in workers who had previously sued over asbestosis.
The plaintiff, Thomas Brown, claimed he came down with asbestosis after being exposed to the mineral in drilling mud but even his own physicians including two pulmonologists and six radiologists denied it.
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That case ground to a halt after a federal judge in Corpus Christi, Texas, discovered many of the plaintiffs previously had claimed they were victims of asbestosis, a condition experts say almost never occurs in the same pair of lungs.
This type of payout doomed most of the companies that made or handled asbestos, since it allowed lawyers to process tens of thousands of claims by workers with smoking-related and naturally caused diseases and overwhelm trusts established to pay for asbestosis and mesothelioma.
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