Mesothelioma & Asbestos Trials

Hi. My name is Danielle. I am a board certified patient advocate and VA accredited claims agent here at the Mesothelioma Center from asbestos.com. Today we’re here to discuss mesothelioma and the investigative approach.

So mesothelioma is a cancer that’s caused from exposure to asbestos and it typically develops decades after someone’s been exposed which leads to exposure being difficult to prove at times. Some patients have worked for numerous employers, they’ve had different occupations, and lived in different states. Today I’m joined by Sam Meirowitz and Daniel Wasserberg of Meirowitz and Wasserberg. These are two attorneys that have been in the industry for a few decades working with mesothelioma cancer patients and their families.

We’re going to discuss how they investigate exposure and help patients move forward with the claims process. Dan, can you please introduce yourself today?

Yes, I’m Daniel Wasserberg. I’ve been practicing attorney for twenty two years.

Been doing asbestos for the last two decades, as you mentioned. I started my practice in Texas and then moved to New York and expanded to a nationwide practice. I’m personally licensed in five jurisdictions, but our firm, and our asbestos docket in particular, has attorneys who are licensed all over the country.

And Sam?

I’m Sam Meirowitz. I actually started out as a prosecutor, representing people that were victims of crimes. And then I moved into working with people that were exposed to asbestos. And I feel in the same way that they’re also victims of corporate crime. So it really makes me feel passionate about the work that I do. And like Daniel, I’ve been practicing for over twenty years and licensed in multiple jurisdictions.

Thank you. So we’ll get started talking about how we investigate these cases. And my first question is what makes a mesothelioma case unique?

What makes a mesothelioma case unique is the fact that the person is always diagnosed a decade or more after they’ve been exposed to asbestos. So we say that the injury occurred when they were diagnosed, but the cause of the injury was many, many years ago, and so that requires a unique investigative approach.

Yeah, and we have to go back in time and try to recreate what the work history was in order to figure out all the different ways that the person was exposed to asbestos. And that takes time. It takes investigation. It takes talking to people, sometimes sitting down and hearing stories about what kind of work different people did and who they did it with.

Essentially you’re getting their life story to understand everything that they’ve done throughout their life. I mean, some patients I talk to, they worked 50 ago, so…

We absolutely are getting their life story even more than they realize what they would be telling us.

Yeah, lot of times they’re just like, I have no idea how I was exposed to asbestos, how are you gonna know? And that’s why we’re experts in this because we know all the different asbestos containing products and so when we sit down and we do a work history with them, we can ask them, hey, what are different types of specific tasks that you would do on the job? And then we ask them, hey, did you ever do this? Did you ever do that? Yes, no, yes, no. And then we build from there.

And what about your patients that had no occupational exposure? That say they’ve never worked with asbestos, what kind of conversation is that?

We all hear about mesothelioma and asbestos so often that it sounds like an open and obvious danger, but it’s not. It’s really more of a hidden defect or a hidden danger.

So what we have to do is, we have to talk to the people, find out what products they used. For example, maybe it was talcum powder, shouldn’t have had any asbestos in it, wasn’t supposed to have any asbestos in it, but unfortunately often did. That’s just an example of a hidden asbestos danger.

Yeah, I mean, what I think a lot of people don’t realize, and I get asked this all the time, you know, what is asbestos? What is it? Is it some kind of chemical that’s made in a lab? You know, no.

It’s a naturally occurring mineral fiber. So it didn’t bother anyone until we mined it and took it out of the ground. The weird thing about it is it doesn’t doesn’t smell funny. It doesn’t really irritate your skin.

So it’s not something that your body would ordinarily know to stay away from. Like for example, you know not to drink bleach, right? Because it smells really strong, it feels like it’s toxic. So that’s something that your body says, no, I’m not gonna mess with that.

Or if something’s super hot, you don’t want to touch it. But with asbestos you just don’t realize how dangerous it is.

Yeah, which is, I mean we talk to patients that don’t know how they were exposed or have secondary exposure, so their spouse coming home with asbestos on their clothes and they don’t know. So that leads to needing to ask a lot of questions to figure out exposure.

Oh yeah, one of the big cases we had, the woman who we ended up representing thought she was exposed to asbestos from Christmas tree flocking, but it turned out that she wasn’t even alive during the time period when Christmas tree flocking did contain asbestos. Unfortunately, it did contain asbestos for a period of time. What turned out was she had a secondary exposure from her father, but she wasn’t even thinking about that when we started the case.

Yeah, which I find very, very common. A lot of patients think it’s one avenue and it turns out to be 10 avenues or something completely different than they thought. So using an experienced firm helps identify that exposure.

Or some bizarre thing that you would never think about. Like, for example, there were actually cigarette filters that contained one of the most potent forms of asbestos. And people thought that they were actually doing a good thing by getting an asbestos filtered cigarette because they were told that this was healthier and didn’t realize that they were actually sucking in really, really potent asbestos fibers even worse than the tobacco that they were smoking.

Yeah.

Marketed as the safer cigarette because of the asbestos filter in And the people had no idea.

You know, people had no idea. So you have to sit down and have a conversation with people. That’s why sometimes when we meet, we sit on the couch for hours with these people and go through their whole history and like, really, why do you care about that? And we’re like, well, we’ll see.

Yeah, lot of people don’t know what contained asbestos.

Yep. And people, back to your original question, people will be surprised that we could stay for a long time and the time just flies by.

You know, they think, wow, you were here for like two, three hours and I learned so much about myself.

Yeah. How do you piece together a person’s history when they’ve worked for multiple employers, had different occupations, worked in different states? How do you go about figuring out who to pursue and really piecing together the puzzle for them?

Yeah, the way that I like to do it is when I come to your home and meet with you, I break the meeting into three parts. And what I’ll do is I’ll probably start with medical and then we’ll go to what’s going to be the longest part of the meeting if you have an extensive work history. And then after work history, I’ll do probably explain the legal side, how I represent you. But that work history piece is the longest part.

And during that, we can either work backwards from the present day all the way to your first job or we can start with your job and work up to the present day. But either way, we’re going to try to go through your whole work history and identify how you were exposed to asbestos because asbestos caused the mesothelioma, and by doing that, we typically are able figure out pretty quickly how a person was exposed. Now sometimes it was non occupational and that’s a different story. We also have to go outside of the work history to figure that out.

Yeah, and if it is occupational, a lot of times what we’ll do is ask, do you have any coworkers that you worked with that we can talk to that are willing to give us information? Because sometimes they may remember something that your actual client doesn’t remember. And so they can sometimes fill in the pieces to the puzzle that would be so much easier than trying to potentially have to order documents that were records that don’t exist anymore. Oftentimes, like you said, it’s years and years and years after the actual work history, like the work exposures. So there’s no like video of what people are doing. It’s really just learning from investigation.

And are family members just as valuable as coworkers to the investigation at times?

Oh yeah, it depends what kind of case, but absolutely. Particularly in cases where it’s a non occupational exposure or say a talcum powder case, the family member is going to be critically important. Sometimes a family member is also critically important in an occupational case, but I’m just emphasizing that’d be even more so when it’s outside of the work history.

Yeah, and the family members also, I notice will… The spouse will remember like, hey. Do you remember Jimmy? Like, you forgot about Jimmy. Like, I remember his his wife. We used to play whatever together. And then finds a way to actually get in touch with that coworker.

So having the family around a lot of times can be super helpful.

Sometimes you just need a person’s son or daughter to just keep them focused and keep the meeting moving forward.

And sometimes family members work together. You’ll a son or a daughter that worked with a parent and can fill in blanks as well.

Those are some really good points to understand why it’s important to have family present in these meetings. And coworkers, if they can make the meetings, great. But you can probably get in touch with them at a later time to verify some exposure and get more details to pursue a case.

100%. And, you know, with the children, we do sometimes have to ask them to kindly leave the room because attorney client privilege only applies to the attorney and the mesothelioma victim and their spouse. So there are times when we have to ask them not to be present. They don’t always understand that, so I just like to mention that.

Yeah. I mean, there’s informational sessions where you’re trying to gather information, and that’s helpful to have them around. But then when you’re talking about case strategy, you don’t want them around. And it’s really just like Daniel said, to preserve the attorney client privilege.

And then like you said, when we’re having an initial meeting, we’re not asking them to bring in coworkers and stuff like that. It’s really just getting who might they remember. Although I think Daniel one time went from a… Literally went from a sign up to meet with a potential coworker. Do you remember that? I think that was in the South. I can’t remember what case that was.

Yeah. It turned out that we went to meet this man and I said, you look really familiar to me.

And he said, no, I don’t think we’ve ever met before. And I said, do you have a brother? He’s like, I got a couple brothers. And turned out I had deposed his brother.

Interesting.

It’s been all over.

Yeah. The stories are Yeah. Always And what about so we talk about records and coworkers and family members. Now, I talk to patients that’ll you know, you’re talking about exposure and they’re like, oh, well, my company’s not in business anymore, or the building I worked in or the factory I worked in are destroyed.

So how do you get these records if the companies aren’t around, or the names have changed, ownerships changed, those types of things?

More often than not, it has changed or been demolished or been recreated in some way. I mean, we’re talking about fifty years plus for the kind of industrial job sites that you mentioned. I mean, it could be less than that.

But in most cases, we’re not going to be able to have current era site inspection where the place looks like it did when the person worked there.

However, really good at investigating, I guess you could call it forensic investigating, and we go back and recreate a picture, and we do that with documents, we do that with historical information, and we do that with the person’s memory. I mean, we do rely on our client’s memory a great deal, I think more than they realize that it’s going to be before they’ve actually hired us. Wouldn’t you say so?

Totally. Everything Daniel said is true. But then on top of that, if they did work at some large factory that some massive corporation, some large international corporation in manufacturing, production, something like that. A lot of times what we do on the back end is we go and we get discovery. We pursue in court discovery against those companies and those… And we force those companies to produce documents that show what they had at certain locations. So that’s in unique circumstances we can do that. But like Daniel said, a lot of the small mom and pop shops, you’re just not going be able to do that.

Yeah, just to develop a contrast.

We represent a lot of U. S. Navy veterans.

If you have a Navy case, most of the time we will be able to get records. We’ll be able to get personal records, ship records, and other records.

Contrast that with a factory, say, in Syracuse or Rochester, New York that was torn down decades ago. It can be a deeper dive and a big dig, but we are typically able to get information through work history records, through documentation. So it comes union Union records, asbestos abatement records, information at the local library, other coworkers who work there, and our clients’ memories.

Yeah. And the larger non military facilities like big paper mills or big power plants, those are the types of facilities that we are able to usually get documents from the companies themselves, even if a plant closes down.

And in situations where if a plant closes down because of some type of toxic pollution, then there’s all kinds of environmental protection documents that you can get as well.

And are there cases you’ve done, let’s say, twenty years ago that will help you make a case for a new patient today?

Absolutely. That’s kind of the nature of asbestos litigation. If I understand your question correctly, you know, somebody worked at a job site, I don’t want to name any particular company, and then a decade or two later I’m representing somebody from the same building, absolutely, yes. That information can be useful both in terms of just from a common sense approach of refreshing some person’s recollection And also, it could be evidence in the next case if those companies were there and they were at the deposition and cross examined the person who was testifying or the documents were, you know, made formal exhibits somehow. It could be actual evidence.

Yeah, mean we have a head start in that situation. We’ve already worked up the job site. So we have leads on coworkers. Like Daniel said, have leads on documents. It puts us in a much better position. But it doesn’t mean that we need to have had prior cases at a site. We’re always working up new job sites almost every day.

Okay.

Yeah, mean, sounds like And old.

And old.

New, right?

Yeah, it just sounds like there’s numerous ways to get these documents and help move a case forward.

So there’s not much burden on the patient other than them sharing verbally what they know, and then you do the rest on the Yeah, back clients are not going out and investigating.

We’re doing all that work. They’re focused on their health. The most important thing. Course. And that’s what they hire us to do.

What would you say to someone who’s worried that they don’t have a case because they’re just so unsure of their exposure history or remembering details from twenty to fifty years ago?

What I would say to the person is please don’t try to be your own lawyer or attorney.

You have to let a professional asbestos lawyer interview you and talk to you in order for you to have any idea whether or not you have a case. And you might have to speak to more than one, to be honest, if the first one doesn’t figure it out. But again and again we see people who have decided on their own that they don’t have a case because they’re not sure how they were exposed. And I’ll just tell you, we’ve gotten 3,000,000, 4,000,000, $5,000,000, maybe even more for people who thought they didn’t have a case.

Yeah, to piggyback on that, a lot of times, you know, they’ll rely upon their doctors and they’ll think, Well, my doctor doesn’t know how I was exposed to asbestos or how I, you know, why I got this. And the thing is, is that the doctor’s focus is in treating the disease. It’s not going backwards in time and figuring out how it happened. Their job is to help deal with the future. What can we do to make your life better going forward? And so we look backward and try to figure out how it happened, the causation, the exposure, and all of those things. And that’s not really the doctor’s role, right?

When your car breaks down, do you try to figure out what’s wrong with it?

Oh, me?

Absolutely not.

Don’t No, call go to person auto mechanic and you ask the auto mechanic, what’s wrong with my car? Please come and talk to us. We’re here to help. We want to investigate. This is what we love to do. This is what we’ve trained our entire team to do. We’re here to help you figure out how you were exposed to asbestos and ultimately to get you compensation to help you with your medical and personal life.

Yeah, mean the other thing is that one thing that I hear over and over again is, Oh, am I going to have to go into court? Oh, I don’t want to do that. Right? And they worry about all of the involvement. That’s the word they use oftentimes. I don’t want to be involved in a whole bunch of court stuff, right?

Most cases do not go to trial. So the only involvement that they ever really have is us preparing them for a statement that just talks about their work history. And that’s about it. We handle all the other stuff.

So they’re actually surprised a lot of times about how little involvement they actually have to have. And the statement that they have to give, they get nervous about it in the beginning and then realize very quickly that it’s actually an opportunity for them to talk about their life’s work. And nine out of 10 times they really enjoy it. In fact, don’t think I’ve had too many clients say to me, Wow, I really hated that process.

Most of the time they really enjoy being able to talk about what they did because a lot of our clients love what they did.

I have represented attorneys who thought they didn’t have a case. So they needed an asbestos lawyer to help them figure out what their case was really about. And I’m talking to one lawyer right now who says, you know, the company that I worked for, they never used asbestos. And I’m trying to figure out a soft landing to explain to him that actually they did because it’s kind of a source of pride for him that they didn’t use asbestos, but we actually can prove that they did use asbestos. So just because you don’t think you have a case, just because you’re even an attorney who doesn’t think you have a case, let a person who spent the last two decades investigating asbestos cases and who’s on the modern cutting edge of the asbestos litigation figure out whether or not you have a case.

Yeah, and I always tell patients, I mean, there’s the medical and legal side, it’s rare cancer, it’s rare litigation, so it’s few and far to find an expert when it comes to getting treated properly as well as when it comes to litigating a case or finding your exposure. And to touch on what you said, Sam, yes, a lot of patients’ concern is time is of the essence. They want to spend their time with their family. They want to focus on their health and the thought of lawyers in court and all these things. But it’s usually just a misunderstanding. So taking the time to speak with their patient advocate or with a lawyer that’s experienced helps ease their mind into moving forward with talking with someone to figure out exposure.

Yeah, we’re super conscious of that part of it and we assure the family that we’re not going to do anything to get in the way of their medical treatment. And oftentimes the sooner that we’re able to get involved, the easier it is to plan around that. So timing is of the essence in that sense, because it allows us to be able to get with the court, let the court know what’s going on, and schedule things. If you wait to the last minute, it makes it a lot harder.

Yeah. We have to be careful here because we don’t want to sound like we won’t try a case. We will try a case if a client wants to.

Right.

But the number of clients who end up having to go into a courtroom is few and far between. And it’s typically because they want to. If the client doesn’t want to go to court, that’s fine because the great majority of cases resolve.

And I can say I’ve only ever been thanked by patients for informing them that this is an option and helping them get to the right lawyer. Know, your patients that don’t want to do this at first because of all these worries we discussed. Usually within months, they’re so grateful that they took that step to talk to someone and figure this out, make sure their family’s taken care of and those types of things.

There’s literally no downside to sitting down and having the conversation.

Our fee process is you only pay if you get a recovery, so there’s no out of pocket costs. So just having the conversation is there’s no downside to it.

If we don’t win, you don’t pay.

Right. So it’s always worth someone’s time to have that conversation.

So what sets Meirowitz and Wasserberg apart from other firms in the way you investigate a case?

Well, look, Daniel and I are still really involved in the process. So even though we don’t handle every aspect of every single case because we couldn’t possibly do it, we have a great team of people that have taken our core values and applied them in the cases. And we take if somebody is exposed to if somebody has mesothelioma, it means they were exposed to asbestos in some way. And we feel like it’s our job to figure it out.

Right? And so some firms, they may not if it’s if it’s not clear, if it’s not easy, if it’s not obvious, it may not be something that they want to put their time and effort into. For us, we feel like every patientclient deserves the best investigation and the most thoughtful creative process to figure out how to help them. And I think that’s where it starts.

It’s client focused. In our core values and our mission statement, it’s all about client first. And when you think that way, then it inspires you and it impassions you to figure out where is this puzzle going, right? It’s like a detective story.

You’ve got to figure out what are the pieces to the puzzle that cause this person to get sick. And we look at it as a challenge and a passion.

Yeah, I know I speak for both of us, but for me, I became an attorney because I wanted to help people. And that’s my passion, is helping people. I know that sometimes the fact that this is about money and compensation can tilt how people view the subject matter. But really, at the end of the day, all we want to do is help. And so because of that, when Sam and I started the law firm, we wanted to be able to provide the best level of service, client communication, representation.

So even today, where our firm has become more of a prominent, well known asbestos law firm nationally, I think we do provide that boutique level of service that people really want. I mean, let’s be honest. This is the worst situation that can happen to you, basically.

And you’re in your hardest time, your darkest hour, and you want to know that someone’s out there fighting for you, we provide our cell phone numbers to our clients. We insist that our attorneys provide their cell phone numbers to their mesothelioma clients. If you’re a mesothelioma client of Meirowitz and Wasserberg, you’re going to have your attorney’s cell phone number. You’re going to be able to get in touch with your lawyer, with the paralegal for the lawyer, whoever it is that you need to speak to. And that is something that we take a lot of pride in, and we make sure that the client knows that we care about them.

I mean, we develop personal relationships with the people. Mean, you know, Danielle.

We’ve had clients that are… Have been clients for a long time. Their cases are over, and they’re they’re they’re sending us holiday wishes. I mean, we still keep in touch with their families. Sometimes I’ll go out to lunch with a client that still lives close to my office in Fort Lauderdale. I mean, really feels like a family practice even though it’s grown into a much larger national practice. And I think that I mean, look, there’s some firms where the owners of the firm don’t even know that the client exists.

So here, you always will be able to get one of us on the phone if need be. And I do think that makes a big difference.

Yeah. When we started, our motto was we represent people, not corporations. That’s still true today. It’s still our motto today.

But what it means is we’re not representing companies. We’re not billing by the hour. We’re sitting down with you in your living room bonding, talking, going through the hard stuff. We may have to learn really personal things about our clients.

And the point is we’re going to get to know each other, we’re going to develop a personal relationship, and it’s going to change how you view the attorney client relationship.

I mean, had one client. I walked into the meeting and she said, If the dog likes you, you’re hired. Right? And so you know what I’m talking about, Rosemary. Anyway, I was really nervous because I was like, Well, what if the dog doesn’t like me? I’m still going to be the best lawyer for this.

But the dog ended up like me. For years now, I ask, how’s the dog doing? You know, you develop relationships and that’s what we love. That’s the part of this practice that we really love is being able to be there for these families, getting to know them, getting to know their children, and just being part of their lives and feeling like we’ve done something that helps them.

Yeah, it’s very clear that Meirowitz and Wasserberg is very passionate, has empathy, and the level of expertise you have is really why patients continue to use your firm over and over. So I really want to thank you for your time today in explaining the investigative process to help patients understand the importance of talking with an experienced law firm. If anyone would like to reach out to learn more about how to pursue a case or to connect with Sam and Dan, can you give us a call here at asbestos.com. Thank you again for your time.

Thanks Danielle. Thank you.