Bad news for asbestos attorneys in recent ruling

In what is becoming a distressing pattern another state court judge has harshly reprimanded a major asbestos law firm, and barred it from appearing in his court after find that it's lawyers had lied and obstructed the discovery process in a case involving an asbestos claim.

The opinion, handed down by Ohio State Court Judge Harry Hanna, listed more then a dozen cases where the attorney of Brayton Purcell LLP either lied to the court, intentionally withheld key discovery material, or distorted the degree of asbestos exposure suffered by a plaintiff.

However, in an important ruling, Judge Hanna did not dismiss the suit of the plaintiff, the estate of the late Harry Kananian, as he found that the family did " nothing improper", but the judge did bar the attorney's from appearing in the Ohio State Court where the case against Lorillard Tobacco Co., had been filed.

The issue in this litigation that has caught the eye of the business and legal press is how the asbestos trusts can be manipulated in certain instances by double or triple dipping into different trusts for the same plaintiff, and how the process often obscures whether a plaintiff has already recovered from another of the trusts at a prior time.

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