This article concerns asbestos-related legal and regulatory issues. Litigation related to asbestos injuries and property damages has been claimed to be the longest-running mass tort in U.S. history.[1] Since asbestos-related disease has been identified by the medical profession in the late 1920s, workers' compensation cases were filed and resolved in secrecy, with a flood of litigation starting in the United States in the 1970s, and culminating in the 1980s and 1990s. A massive multi-district litigation (MDL) complex filing has remained pending in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for over 20 years. As many of the scarring-related injury cases have been resolved, asbestos litigation continues to be hard-fought among the litigants, mainly in individually-brought cases for terminal cases of asbestosis and cancers.
