Whether you’re reading Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, or some contemporary mystery writer, you can bet there’ll be multiple suspects for whatever murder was committed. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Perry Mason will have to review all the clues and witness statements, mull them over in his mind, and hope that the identity of the perpetrator becomes evident.
Some one person must have done it, and yet the evidence seems to implicate everyone. They can’t all have done it, can they? It can’t have been a monstrous conspiracy?
You betcha. That is the plot, in fact, of one of Agatha Christie’s most famous, and most often imitated, mysteries. Since we haven’t identified which one it is, you can’t accuse of spoiling the ending: they all did it. Everybody was in on it.
The asbestos lawyers tying up the dockets in West Virginia seem to have taken a cue from Dame Agatha, blaming everyone in sight for the asbestos-related injuries allegedly suffered by their clients.
Did your company use asbestos products? Was your company in any way associated with a company that used asbestos products? Did the third cousin of your CEO live next to an eight-year-old kid who won a spelling bee with the correct spelling of “asbestos”?
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
Sure, we’re exaggerating, but not by much. The problem is, most of the companies that had real ties to asbestos – and may or may not have been responsible for whatever injuries it caused – have been sued out of existence.
So, what are personal injury attorneys to do? Find someone else to blame, obviously.
Not that they care, but that does create problems for the rest of us, as evidenced by a new report identifying West Virginia as the “epicenter” of “over-naming” or over-blaming.
“Asbestos litigation continues to create problems for businesses, and West Virginia is the epicenter,” the report asserts. “Over-naming of defendants in asbestos litigation, who have little or no known liability for asbestos-related products, is a serious issue and it is trending upward for companies.”
Enough already!