Pittsburgh Corning to Pay $3.5 B Lung Cancer Lawsuit Settlements

September 19, 2016

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A historic case spanning over the course of the last two decades has finally come to a quiet conclusion. Corning Inc. and PPG were the defendants in several lung cancer lawsuit settlements against their joint venture “Pittsburgh Corning Corp.,” which made a pipe insulation product named “Unibestos” from 1964 to 1972 containing significant amounts of asbestos.
Parties ranging from manufacturing workers to pipe fitters to occupants in buildings where Pittsburgh Corning products were installed came forward after developing asbestos-related lung cancers and other diseases.

The final settlement agreed upon by all parties included $825 million in damages as well as 1.4 million PPG shares (or a cash equivalent). Since additional parties may come forward, Corning Inc. and PPG have amassed a compensation fund totaling near $3.5 billion with contributions from their insurance companies for lung cancer lawsuit settlements.
Many of the original filing plaintiffs have passed since the beginning of the lawsuit, so the hefty settlement comes as a small consolation to the victims’ families.
The End of a Long, Litigious Road
Now that the lengthy lawsuit has ended, claimants can finally receive compensation that they have been waiting on for over 20 years. In total, more than 400,000 lawsuits were filed against Pittsburgh Corning Corp. 200,000 of them were settled by the point the company filed for bankruptcy in 2000. Corning, Inc. — an international manufacturer of industrial glass and ceramic products — was the defendant in 11,800 lawsuits as a result of their connection with the case.
Many of the cases began before 1996, and their verdicts caused Pittsburgh Corning to file for bankruptcy. Since bankruptcy is frequently not a legitimate protection against asbestos liabilities, a court-ordered asbestos claims trust was formed in order to manage the payouts. Defendants were eventually ordered to abide by a settlement proposed by a judge in the Federal District Court of Western Pennsylvania.
That settlement, which was reached far back in 2013, was determined at the conclusion of a bankruptcy proceeding for Pittsburgh Corning. The defendants attempted to file countless appeals, possibly to stall the conclusion of the case and………….
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