The Veterans of Foreign Wars is holding “Day of Service” events at posts nationwide honoring veterans’ service during the month of May 2022. In our own way, we at CTC honor that service by trying to help veterans suffering from asbestos-related diseases recover compensation from asbestos trusts, and doing so in such a way as to maximize the amount of compensation that ends up in the veterans’ hands rather than their lawyers.
Every veteran who served at any time prior to the mid-1980s (including veterans who continued to serve thereafter) was exposed to asbestos. Asbestos was used everywhere in the military – in buildings, HVAC systems, engines of all types, ships and boats, etc. For a small but a significant number of veterans, that exposure leads to asbestos-related disease.
Many companies that mined, manufactured, or used asbestos have created legal entities called trusts to provide compensation to individuals who develop disease as a result of exposure to the companies’ asbestos. These trusts currently hold about $25 billion, all of which will be distributed to asbestos victims. Because asbestos was ubiquitous in the military, on a percentage of population basis, veterans will disproportionately qualify for asbestos trust compensation compared to the civilian population.
Some of CTC’s founders and supporting cast have been working on asbestos trust matters, and on the special case of veterans, for well more than a decade. Through a bit of serendipity, the founding partners came together more recently with a shared vision of creating a law firm solely dedicated to making asbestos trust claims for veterans (CTC will help non-veterans as well, but all our current efforts are focused on veterans). CTC’s vision is based on our knowledge of the asbestos trusts and of the following facts that show veterans are currently not being well-served.
- As noted, veterans will disproportionately qualify for asbestos trust compensation;
- Trust compensation is completely independent of any government veterans benefits;
- The availability of trust compensation is little known in the veterans’ community, especially for asbestos-related diseases that are not mesothelioma (i.e., not cancer);
- Law firms that currently represent asbestos trust claimants are often not interested in non-cancer claims;
- Law firms generally charge fees equal to 33-40% of recovered compensation (a few trusts limit fees to 25%), the same fee charged for full court litigation, even though the asbestos trusts claims are check-the-box type claims with nothing in court.
We created CTC for the sole purpose of representing asbestos trust claimants. We do nothing else. We very much want to represent non-cancer claimants because these potential claimants are the least likely to know about asbestos trust compensation and the least able to find interested lawyers. CTC charges a fee of 10% of compensation actually paid (plus expenses, which will be minimal), leaving much more money in the pocket of the claimant. And we were inspired to do this by the fact that veterans are the primary underserved community when it comes to asbestos trusts.
You can find out more about the significance of asbestos trusts for veterans in the following podcast in my interview with the Executive Director of PolicyVets, a veterans advocacy and policy group, and a former Secretary of the VA: here.
