Outrageous Misconduct: The Asbestos Industry on Trial (The Complete New Yorker Reports)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394533208 ISBN 13: 9780394533209

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1985

Examines the attempts of the asbestos industry to cover-up the dangers of asbestos and describes the development of the financial and legal problems of the Manville Corporation

From Publishers Weekly:

This carefully documented expose is an invaluable sourcebook not only for lawyers but for lay readers as well. As Brodeur, a New Yorker writer whose books include The Zapping of America and Expendable Americans, shows, media coverage of the disasters caused by asbestosis has traditionally been minimal. He pursues the behind-the-scenes efforts by key U.S. asbestos firms over some 50 years to challenge their liability for numbers of asbestos-workers' deaths. The legal intricacies presented by Brodeur may prove confusing to some readers, but they will, nonetheless, find his case histories compelling and devastating. The author often focuses on the Mansville Company (formerly Johns-Mansville). Yet the evidence he introduces involves the industry at large: a trail of cover-ups going back to the 1930s, through Borel v. Fioreboardstyle in 1971 and the avalanche of lawsuits that case spawned, leading to Mansville's bankruptcy filing in 1982a move Brodeur interprets as connected to an industry-wide drive "to escape the full measure of its liability for the horror of asbestos disease." November 27
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

The Johns-Manville Company shocked the legal world in 1982 when it filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from claims by victims of asbestos-related illness. True to this book's subtitle, Brodeur deals extensively with the litigation as pects of asbestos companies defending themselves both before and after Man ville's bombshell. Here we have plain tiffs' discovery of coverups and the in dustry's strategies for delay and mitigation of losses. The insurance in dustry, standing to lose billions, is an other player in the melodrama. Also in cluded is background on recently published proposals for restructuring Manville to assure future payments to claimants. The scene is predominately in the courtroom and environs, and lit tle is heard from the victims or their families. Thus, the book may appeal most to potential litigants and their at torneys. Daniel LaRossa, Connet quot P.L., Bohemia,
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.