Mesothelioma Law

In March of 1941, C.S. Stephenson, Commander of Preventive Medicine for the U.S. Navy, sent a memo to Rear Admiral Ross MacIntyre, which said: "We are not protecting the men as we should." Pearl Harbor was still nine months in the future; although it was generally acknowledged by the Roosevelt Administration that U.S. involvement in the war was inevitable, U.S. servicemen had yet to see combat under their own flag. What was Stephenson's issue? The heading of the memo was "Asbestosis." This memo, uncovered years later, is one of the many documents proving that the U.S. government as well as Corporate America have long known about the dangers of asbestos, and deliberately withheld that information from the public.


Today, decades later, those suffering from the agony of mesothelioma are asking why their government and/or their employers failed to protect them. Charles Ay, a former shipyard worker understands too well: "Money." Ay has testified in several legal actions and has said that by 1975 (if not earlier), corporations and government alike understood that to fully protect workers would have required the use of special HazMat (hazardous materials) suits such as are used by EPA inspectors.
"By the time you add up the cost of all that protective gear, you are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars...it was a lot cheaper to let them work unprotected," said Ay.
What is the dollar value of a human life? While this concept should seem an obscenity to most people, the law states quite clearly that asbestos victims and the courts have a right make that determination.