Some Things Still Ring True After Four Decades of Asbestos Litigation
This month Kazan Law celebrates four decades of obtaining justice for asbestos victims. To commemorate the occasion, we are taking a look at the firm’s history to participate in our own unique way in social media’s Throwback Thursday. In my last post, I talked about how I founded Kazan Law in March 1974 when as a young attorney I found myself representing dying workers. They had been exposed to asbestos because of a company whose name now has become synonymous with asbestos litigation: Johns Manville. It was a landmark case that set a legal precedent and launched me on my journey of handling over a thousand of asbestos litigation cases.
In the firm’s archives, I found an interview I gave to the California edition of the Daily Journal, a legal community newspaper, in 1985. Some of what I said then about asbestos litigation still rings true now. So for Throwback Thursday, here are several excerpts:
Working with asbestos-related clients is both depressing and rewarding, according to Oakland attorney Steven Kazan who heads one of the Bay Area’s major plaintiff’s asbestos practices. “As much as you try to retain a sense of detachment, you get involved,” said Kazan, the founder of Kazan & McClain. But helping to obtain financial security for asbestos victims dying of chronic disease is rewarding.
Still true. Except today it is Kazan, McClain, Satterley & Greenwood, A Professional Law Corporation.
Kazan said his firm will look at about 1,800 possible cases this year, 1,000 of them asbestos-related and take only about 100 of them, the article states.
Factors Kazan uses in evaluating potential cases include:
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the degree of disability
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the evidence of asbestos exposure
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potential monetary damages
Also still true.
Kazan said he sometimes advises people with minor asbestos-related problems to wait and see if their illness progresses to avoid settling for an amount of money that will not cover their medical expenses if their condition worsens.
Still good advice.
Although exposure to asbestos has greatly decreased due to public awareness of its dangers, may people have been exposed but not yet become ill and Kazan predicted that he won’t have to change his practice much in the near future.
“For the next 10 to 15 years there will be a substantial volume of asbestos litigation,” Kazan said.
Sadly, this also has proved to be true. In fact, it’s been more than 25 years and the need to help obtain financial security for asbestos victims continues to drive myself and my associates forward in our work more than ever.