Common Legal Issues in Mesothelioma Cases

How Long Do I Have to File a Lawsuit?

By law, every state allows a certain amount of time for mesothelioma or other asbestos cancer patients to file a lawsuit, which is referred to as the statute of limitations. The statute’s “clock” typically begins ticking once a person has been diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer. However, the mesothelioma laws vary from state to state and, of course, every asbestos-related case is different.

Because the time allowed to file a mesothelioma lawsuit is different in every state, it’s incredibly important to contact a mesothelioma attorney as soon as possible if you or someone close to you thinks that you may have mesothelioma. In every state there is a limited amount of time to file a lawsuit and sometimes the time limit is a short as one year.

Contacting a mesothelioma attorney as soon as possible is essential to protect your legal rights.

Call Baron & Budd at 1.866.855.1229 or contact us here to find out what the time limit is in your state.

The Discovery Rule

Mesothelioma typically does not manifest until decades after someone’s initial exposure to asbestos.

In fact, it is well known that mesothelioma can take decades to develop after a person’s initial exposure to asbestos. Of course, at the time a person is exposed to asbestos they have no way of knowing whether they will ever develop mesothelioma or any other asbestos-related disease, and in most states, they cannot bring a lawsuit for asbestos alone.

Here’s how the discovery rule works in asbestos cases: When someone develops a disease as a result of another’s wrongdoing that happened many years prior, he or she is allowed to bring the claim within a set period after the illness is diagnosed and they know or should have known the cause of the disease. Under traditional statutes of limitations that existed in most states many years ago, the time period for bringing suit might have expired just a couple years after a person’s exposure to asbestos, even if no asbestos-related disease was diagnosed until many years after the fact. Fortunately, the discovery rule has been adopted into mesothelioma law by most states to protect the rights of an injured person to seek justice.

The Second Injury Rule

If you have been diagnosed with asbestosis or asbestos-related pleural disease, you are at greater risk for developing certain forms of cancer in the future, including malignant mesothelioma. If you filed an asbestos lawsuit in the past based on that previous diagnosis, you may wonder what will happen if you develop asbestos-related cancer in the future.

Fortunately, the law in most states allows you to bring a new lawsuit to recover for the asbestos-related cancer. In Texas, the law changed in 2000 thanks to a legal battle fought by Baron & Budd. Before that time, Texas law prohibited the victim of a second asbestos-related disease from filing a second lawsuit. But now, asbestos victims have the right to pursue a second, separate claim if they develop asbestos-related cancer.

In Pustejovsky v. Rapid-American Corp., Baron & Budd represented an ironworker who developed asbestosis in the early 1980s. He sued one asbestos company responsible for his disease and won a settlement. Then, in the 1990s, the same man was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung caused by exposure to asbestos. The ironworker then filed a mesothelioma lawsuit, but the trial court threw out the case because of the earlier asbestosis lawsuit. The judge ruled that Texas law gave the ironworker the right to file only one lawsuit, regardless of the fact that he had developed a separate asbestos-related cancer many years after the conclusion of his asbestosis lawsuit.

Fortunately, the Texas Supreme Court rejected the trial judge’s reasoning. Instead, the court agreed with Baron & Budd attorneys that a person who develops a asbestos-related cancer has a right to bring a mesothelioma lawsuit under Texas law even if they previous filed a lawsuit for a different asbestos-related disease.

In addition to convincing the Texas Supreme Court to change Texas mesothelioma law on this issue, Baron & Budd also lead the charge to convince the supreme court of Iowa and an appellate court in Florida to recognize this important right for the victims of asbestos-related cancers. Today, many states around the country allow an asbestos victim to file a second lawsuit if they develop a separate, asbestos-related disease like mesothelioma.