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Long Asbestos Docket Prompts Court to Propose Special Department to Hear Cases

Monday, November 30, 2009

Two thirds of California’s asbestos lawsuits land in San Francisco Superior Court, and the cases take up about 45 percent of the jurors assigned to civil cases. The lawsuits are filed by people suffering from asbestos-related disease such as mesothelioma contracted from breathing asbestos fibers and by their families if the patients have died.

To manage the heavy asbestos caseload more efficiently, Presiding Superior Court Judge James J. McBride has created an asbestos case management department in San Francisco.

“The San Francisco Superior Court carries the largest asbestos caseload of any of California’s 58 superior courts, Judge McBride said in a press release. “The aim … is to achieve more effective case management. We want to increase our ability to send a case to trial at the time set for trial and eliminate the pattern of repeated continued trial dates. We want to make sure that cases set for trial are ready for trial, and that cases that should settle before trial do so before we call in a large panel of jurors.”

The order drafted by McBride would require that starting in January 2010, all pre-trial motions in asbestos cases and other matters shall be heard in the asbestos department. The new asbestos department would hear all discovery, law and motion and case management matters. Judge McBride assigned Judge Harold Kahn to oversee the department.

San Francisco Superior Court currently has more than 1,660 pending asbestos cases. That represents about two-third’s of the state’s asbestos caseload.



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Labels: National News

posted by Wade Rawlins at 11:53 AM
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