Did the Manufacturers of Asbestos Products Know the DangersAttorney Joe Williams

In a legal case, we have to prove that the
manufacturers of asbestos products knew or should have known that asbestos was a danger.
Hi. I'm Joe Williams. I'm a mesothelioma trial attorney in New York City. And I want to talk
to you a little bit about some of the legal standards that apply to a mesothelioma legal
case.

In a case on behalf of a victim of mesothelioma against the manufacturers of asbestos products
or companies that use asbestos in reference to their product, we have to prove that those
companies actually knew that asbestos was a hazard and didn't warn anybody about the
danger or that they should have known (with a little bit of reasonable research) that
asbestos was a hazard. And they should have warned end users and workers about the dangers
of asbestos. In order to prove that they actually knew, one of the ways that we do that is through
the company's own documents. Now these could be documents related to research and development
that the company they themselves did in which they learned asbestos was a hazard.

Or it
could be internal memorandum or letters where employees or officers of the corporation are
talking about the asbestos hazard. We can also show their knowledge -- their actual
knowledge -- through their membership in industry trade organizations - organizations where
they had meetings and talked about the asbestos hazard. Or sent out publications to that particular
company in which articles or information was present in the publication about the hazards
of asbestos. We also can introduce citations or fines in some cases levied by OSHA or other
municipal entities against a company's manufacturing plant, wherein there's a fine or citation
related to asbestos dust at the plant.

And in those cases where we're proving that a
company should have known, we do that with the general information that was out there
for the world to evaluate and see especially that was available to manufacturers of products
that had asbestos in them. And this comes in the form of medical journals, in publications
such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (known as JAMA) or its counterpart
in Great Britain known as the Lancet. The importance of those medical journals is that
every doctor who is a member of these medical societies gets the journals and in the past
century those journals were filled with articles about the causation between asbestos and mesothelioma
and asbestos and cancer. And importantly, many of these corporations have doctors on
staff who are in possession of these articles.

Additionally, there was information in the
mainstream media. In the 1950s, Newsweek magazine had articles about asbestos. In 1953, the
Encyclopedia Britannica listed asbestos as a cause of cancer. So the 'should have known'
standard takes into account what companies should have known with a little bit of reasonable
amount of research into this issue of asbestos dangers before selling the product containing
asbestos into the stream of commerce for end users and workers to use every day at work.
I'm sure you have many more questions about the legal standards that apply to a mesothelioma
case and we can answer your questions.

I encourage you to call the number below, that's my office
number. I'm Joe Williams and we can answer your questions. Thank you..