Why is it that West Virginia’s court system is so clogged up with Asbestos tort proceedings? The answer is very simple, claimants and their legal representatives are seeking to get the most money from the companies and individuals they claim against. That is reasonable, but the attorneys seek out Mississippi and West Virginia as two of the places where they can get the best results for their claim. West Virginia is seen as being very hard on the defendants of such cases.

In 2002 one West Virginia Judge, Justice Maynard, has seen this as a problem that restricts West Virginia’s citizens from getting a satisfactory trial and so dismissed a number of cases that were from individuals who have never resided in West Virginia and have never worked in West Virginia. This action was seen by many people as being a reasonable response to the venue shopping by some of the legal teams. The result has been, however, that Justice Maynard has been accused of having shares in the companies being sued and has been removed from presiding over asbestos litigation in the future.

Some States allow the plaintiff to rely on their memory for the identification of the products they used decades ago. Other States allow for some serious cases of asbestosis to be bundled with other cases that are not so serious in order to get a larger settlement for the less serious cases. Judge MacQueen from West Virginia noted that allowing for mass trials and consolidation of asbestos lawsuits actually encouraged more cases to be filed rather than diminishing them.

Let’s consider the practical side of asbestos tort processing. Imagine a judge having to schedule 5,000 asbestos trials for a 1 week trial. The resultant backlog would mean trials still proceeding until almost 2100. The only way is to take mass trials and deal with the claims speedily. If the claims are not dealt with speedily then the whole procedure becomes ridiculous.

Questions need to be asked about the suitability of having a claim processed by a court where the exposure to asbestos did not happen in the court’s jurisdiction. Also, a question needs to be asked if the defendants should be put before a court in a State where the company is not located or individual is not resident. It may be that only when the asbestos exposure happened in that jurisdiction that the court needs to hear the case, or are we simply being too simplistic as we look at the problem?