Press Releases

Today, the House of Representatives voted 221 to 199 to pass H.R. 982, the “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act (FACT) of 2013.”  This legislation requires an asbestos trust to file quarterly reports with a bankruptcy court that includes asbestos victim’s personally identifying information.  After passage of the bill, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) issued the following statement:

“The so called FACT Act seeks to address a nonexistent problem.  In over two hours of debate on the House Floor, proponents failed to present a single example, report, or study in support of their argument that there is endemic fraud in the asbestos claims process.  There is evidence, however, to the contrary.  The independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported that there is no empirical evidence of fraud related to the asbestos trusts’ claims processing system.  In short, the FACT Act is a solution in search of a problem that will have very real repercussions for asbestos victims.

“While benefiting special interests, the FACT Act is an assault on the asbestos victims' privacy.  The legislation mandates that asbestos trusts, designed to compensate victims, must publicly report victims’ information.  This information could include a victim’s name, address, income, medical information.  While simply gathering all of this information is invasive as is, imagine the potential for all of those private details to be made available on the Internet.  Essentially, asbestos victims would be re-victimized by exposing their health information to the public.

“This legislation addresses a non-existent problem and is strongly opposed by the asbestos victims, privacy advocates, consumer groups, labor organizations, and legal representatives of future claimants. I’m left to wonder who actually supports this bill.  And why are their interests being put ahead of asbestos victims?”

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