Sophie Zavaglia: How much is my case worth? That is a question we get from basically every single client who comes through our doors, and it’s a valid question, and one that deserves a real answer. If you’ve looked at all online, or seen commercials related to asbestos cases, you’ve probably heard a lot of very large numbers thrown out for what a case might be worth, or how much money is available for people to get compensated. On today’s episode, we’re going to be addressing that question head-on: what could your case potentially be worth?
Welcome to The Asbestos Files, where we expose corporate greed, cut through the confusion, and fight for people who deserve answers. My name is Sophie Zavaglia, and I’m a trial attorney at SWMW Law, where we believe that when corporations put profits over safety, people deserve an advocate in their corner who is willing to fight for them.
On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about case worth and addressing this very valid question of, hey, if I call an attorney, what could I potentially be looking at in the way of compensation, how much is my case worth? The reality is there’s no single answer to that question. There are certainly a lot of people who can make promises they may not be able to keep, without even looking at a case, saying that’s a million-dollar case, that’s a multi-million-dollar case, that’s a fifty-thousand-dollar case. The reality is that every single case is different, and one of the things I’ve told clients in the past to explain this is that we start from zero. Anytime a case comes into our office, the case on its own is not worth anything. The way a case has value is the information we’re able to gather to add value to that claim.
Another way of putting it is that if a person has an asbestos-related disease, has a diagnosis, and asks an attorney how much their case is worth, we have to look at several factors. One of those is the disease itself. Mesothelioma, as we’ve talked about in other episodes, is a very rare form of cancer that has one recognized cause in the United States: exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma is known as a signature disease for exposure to asbestos; the two are basically synonymous. If you have mesothelioma, the likelihood is almost certain that you’ve been exposed to asbestos at some point in your life. You may not know where or when, but the two go hand in hand.
So when we have a case that involves mesothelioma, right off the bat that increases the theoretical value of a case, because there’s very little a defendant or a company that made asbestos-containing products can say to throw that diagnosis into doubt. Lots of companies will deny that mesothelioma and asbestos are synonymous, but the reality is that basically every health organization across the globe agrees that if you have meso, that’s a signature disease for exposure to asbestos, and there’s less to call into question in a case like that.
When we deal with other diseases, like lung cancer, that can be caused by a whole range of different exposures, smoking, for example. A lot of our clients were exposed to asbestos and also smoked cigarettes. There’s more a company can call into doubt about the diagnosis if you have something like lung cancer or asbestosis, or pulmonary fibrosis; lots of different products and substances can cause lung scarring. A company can come in and say there are other things that could have caused this, not necessarily asbestos. That affects the value of the case, so how strong a diagnosis we have, and whether there are objective factors pointing to asbestos exposure in the medical records, are things we look at.
We also look at how old a person is when they’re diagnosed. Even though it may make a case more difficult to prove, if a person is young when diagnosed with mesothelioma, that potentially increases the value of the case, because we’re dealing with someone who isn’t at the end of their life; if they’re in their thirties or forties, they conceivably would have had another thirty or forty years to live. That increases the value of the case because it means more in the way of damages. That’s not to say that if you’re in your sixties, seventies, or even eighties, your case isn’t worth anything; frankly, all human life is sacred. It’s just one of many factors we look at, and that the defendants look at, when deciding whether they want to pay on a particular claim.
Another factor is not just the diagnosis, but whether we can prove how that individual was exposed to asbestos. When we file a lawsuit, we have the burden of proof: we have to show through evidence, whether testimony, records, corporate documents, or military documents, that a person was exposed to specific companies’ asbestos-containing products through their work or home life. This matters because a lot of times when people come through our doors, they tell us they’ve been exposed but may not know how, or may not remember the products or coworkers involved. Sometimes people die very shortly after hiring us, before we can get a full picture of their exposure, which affects how much value we can add to the case.
The flip side is someone who comes in with their own records or a very good memory, saying, I worked at this factory from 1965 to 1970, here’s a list of coworkers. We can use that to research and get records, figure out what companies were there, and compare it with other clients who worked at the same facilities. All of that gives a clearer picture of the specifics of someone’s exposure, which in turn increases the value of the case, because the more evidence we have about how people were exposed, the stronger and more convincing the case is.
Another factor is how long a person was exposed to asbestos. We’ve seen an entire range: some people were only exposed for a couple of weeks or a month, which sits lower on the scale of case value because it’s a smaller exposure and can be harder to tie to a disease. That doesn’t mean a case is worthless, it just affects the total value. On the other end, we have people who worked in asbestos-containing industries their entire careers, twenty to fifty years of exposure to a whole range of companies’ products. If we can line up the specific companies or products involved, that greatly increases the value of a case compared to someone exposed for only a few days.
Another factor is the viability of the companies at issue. Over time, a lot of companies that made and sold asbestos-containing products have gone bankrupt from being sued repeatedly for the harm they caused. If a person spent their career at a company that’s gone entirely out of business, there may not be much compensation available. If the company set up a bankruptcy trust, there’s probably a way to get compensation, though it may not be as much as if the company were still solvent. If the company’s out of business with no insurance and no money to be found, there’s not a lot we can do as a law firm; that’s part of the unfortunate reality of asbestos’s long latency period, since people usually don’t get sick until twenty or thirty years down the road, and by then some of those companies have closed.
Another factor is jurisdiction and venue. We do our best, as I think all asbestos law firms do, to figure out the best place to file a lawsuit based on where the person is from, where they were exposed, and how we may best get compensation for them. There are absolutely some jurisdictions much friendlier to companies, and some courts much more favorable to plaintiffs, with some right down the middle. We consider all of that before we file a lawsuit, because it affects how much money we’re able to recover.
Then there are the many circumstances individual to a particular client: length of exposure, age at diagnosis, occupation. If someone was a mechanic, it makes sense they’d have worked with brake materials or clutches. Some people have occupations that at first blush don’t line up clearly, we’ve represented architects, for example, where it wasn’t obvious how they’d been exposed. Through our investigation, we were able to track down certain types of exposure they didn’t even remember when they first came in. Part of our job is really leaving no stone unturned. Other individual factors include whether the person is still alive or has passed away, and how much money they may have lost, sometimes decades of income, especially if someone got sick at a young age.
That sense of unfairness, that someone lost out on income because they got sick from a totally preventable disease, is a lot of times what increases the value of a case for companies, because they know that if a case goes before a jury and there are egregious circumstances, and most of the time there are, those smoking gun documents that show a company knew what it was doing was wrong, they don’t want to risk the kind of huge verdicts you’ve probably heard about in the news.
Finally, we look for the human factors behind a case: do we have a family willing to stand by that person, a spouse, children, grandchildren, that make it that much more painful that this person has gotten sick. That’s not to say a case without a big family isn’t worth anything, but the more sympathetic the circumstance, generally the more it can matter, because that’s something that scares defendants in this litigation. The vast majority of the people I work with did one thing: worked their entire lives to support their family. That type of story can increase the value of a case, because companies don’t want that kind of sympathetic plaintiff going before a jury.
Value is also driven by whether there’s a viable company, and how many different companies we can point to as exposure sources, and by the system of bankruptcy trusts that provide value to people who’ve gotten sick from asbestos-related diseases. Going after a lot of bankruptcy trusts versus solvent companies is just a matter of piecing through the different exposures, and it will affect the value of the case.
So the bottom line: if you’re curious about not only whether you have a case, but whether it’s worth your time and energy, and whether you’ll even see any money at the end, you need to be talking to a lawyer who not only does this litigation, but can ask you the right questions and make a better determination based on your individual circumstances. I’ll just tell you that if you have anybody who, without hearing your case, without hearing your specifics, promises you a big old bucket of money, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. You need to seek out somebody who actually knows what they’re doing and can give you an honest assessment of what your case may be worth.
For our next segment, we’re going to be talking about myth versus fact. The first myth is that there’s a standard payout in cases, that every mesothelioma case gets X number of dollars. This could not be further from the truth. If someone is telling you, without knowing anything about you or your case, that you’re guaranteed to get a million dollars, five million dollars, or a hundred thousand dollars, you need to completely disregard that person, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. The reality is that no two cases are the same. Whether you have mesothelioma, lung cancer, or any other asbestos-related disease, every case is going to have a different range of values depending on a whole range of factors, including age at diagnosis, occupation, length of exposure, whether the companies involved are still in business, and how many different exposure points there are. That’s why nobody should be guaranteeing you how much your case is worth; if they’re doing that, they frankly don’t know what they’re doing.
The next myth: trust fund claims are chump change compared to trial verdicts. This is a myth because it just depends, on what trust you’re talking about, the strength of evidence you can provide, and how many different trusts you’re able to access. The bankruptcy trust system was set up as a benefit not only to the companies who declared bankruptcy, but also to the people who got sick. We’ve been incredibly successful with cases that only seek compensation from bankruptcy trust claims; it depends on the individual circumstances, but it can certainly be much more than what you might think of as chump change, and actually be worth your time pursuing.
Finally, the myth that taking a settlement means giving up. As a lawyer, I have a lot of feelings about this one in particular. Litigating a case costs a lot of money, and there’s a lot of risk involved, even in the best circumstances. Anytime you bring a case before a jury, you’re taking a very big risk, spending a lot of money, and there’s no way to predict what a jury will do. I understand the impulse to feel like settling means you’re not being truthful or that you’re being paid off, but the reality is that settlements often make a lot of sense for our clients. They eliminate the risk of going to trial and getting nothing, and a jury can absolutely come back with a zero-dollar verdict even in the best circumstances.
Settlements provide certainty, and they provide very critical dollars for our clientele, who are almost always either very sick, receiving chemotherapy or radiation, and those medical bills aren’t cheap, or dealing with a family left to pick up the pieces after a loved one dies, elderly spouses who might depend on their deceased spouse’s income, or a spouse who hasn’t worked in thirty years. Those people need funds to live and to get the medical care they need. Taking a settlement is not giving up. It’s putting money into the pocket of people who deserve it.
That’s it for today. I appreciate you listening. If you have any questions about what your case is worth, or more questions about any aspect of an asbestos-related injury, please reach out to an attorney. You’re welcome to call our office; I’ll put the information to contact us in the show notes. I appreciate your time. We do this because it matters, and at SWMW we believe that people come first, people matter, and we know that the only way companies are going to be held accountable is by being willing to take the fight to them. I’m Sophie Zavaglia. Thank you for listening.
