To the Editor:
The recent story on asbestos filings in Illinois and nationally had little information to offer except asbestos industry complaints about the numbers of defendants and the numbers of suits filed.
Overlooked and ignored, by obvious intent, was the fact that if an attorney filing suit misses an appropriate defendant and thereby reduces the recovery opportunities for clients, they commit legal malpractice. By naming the manufacturers or installers and other asbestos industry companies or individuals, attorneys avoid the obvious harm to their clients of missing the real culprits and getting sued themselves. The asbestos industry knew of the horrible dangerousness of their product decades ago but ceaselessly and profitably exposed others to certain death or other serious injuries.
Because it cannot be known until all possible persons or groups have been eliminated from being at fault, more defendants being sued is the only legal or moral way to make certain all bad actors are made to pay for their, at best, reckless conduct. If I had my way, a series of criminal prosecutions for negligent or reckless homicide or infliction of serious injury would have been filed against asbestos industry corporate wrongdoers decades ago.
Timothy E. Hogan
The law Offices of Timothy E. Hogan, LLC
St. Louis