Barbara Ormsby recently attended the Perrin's 8th Annual Cutting-Edge Issues in Asbestos Litigation Conference.  It was both enlightening to hear about the latest emerging trends in asbestos litigation and incredibly empowering to exchange experiences and learn from one another’s case studies.

Some key takeaways from the 2017 Perrin’s asbestos conference:

• 2016 Year in Review:  Compilation of data from 2014-2016 shows a downward trend in the total number of asbestos lawsuit filings.  This trend is driven by non-malignant disease types, while mesothelioma and lung cancer filings are steady and increasing.  For 2016, while other cancer, non-malignant, and unknown disease filings have decreased, filings for mesothelioma and lung cancer have not.  Mesothelioma filings are steady, and lung cancer filings have increased.  The emerging trends discussion focused on the number of trials being down over time, but verdict ranges still being very high.
• Emerging Jurisdictions: Louisiana and Pennsylvania both showed an increase in filings as well as an influx of plaintiff firms filing there for the first time.  Louisiana plaintiff attorney, Lindsey Cheek, gave an update on Louisiana stressing that the values will go up in Louisiana and there will be more corporate representative depositions due to a recent 4^th Circuit decision expanding Louisiana’s subpoena power over non-resident corporations who are parties to the suit.
• Talc:  Talc is the hot focus and most plaintiff lawyers believe talc may be responsible for the increasing number of cases where they cannot find “traditional” sources of exposure.  Plaintiffs are focusing hard on cosmetics and other household or non-obvious talc exposures.
• In-house panel tips: The in-house panel focused on the tension between good timely reporting, and too much important information being hidden in the body or reports.  They also stressed that there is insufficient partner review of reports (or substantive knowledge) prior to the materials being passed on to the carriers/in-house people.  They also focused on the need for succession planning at firms and getting younger lawyers more substantive experience. 
• Emerging causation / medical defense: The most lively session, was the discussion of the changing science and medicine involving DNA analysis for diagnosis and causation (and the availability of new tests that may help increase diagnostic accuracy early and possibly identify non-asbestos causes in small subsets of cases).