Honeywell Touts Dedication to Improving Lives While Seeking to Strip Asbestos Disease Sufferers of Important Rights
Honeywell touts itself as a company dedicated to improving the quality of peoples’ lives and making the world and safer and more secure place to live. However, Honeywell’s actions speak louder than words.
Alex Formuzis of the Environmental Working Group reports on the Huffington Post Blog, that Honeywell is the number one contributor to members of congress seeking to limit the rights of persons suffering from deadly asbestos disease, including mesothelioma, through the passing of the so-called “FACT Act.”
Honeywell’s support for this measure stems from the fact that it has paid out more than $1.1 billion in asbestos damages since 2010. Not due to fraud, but because the company knowingly exposed workers and consumers to asbestos.
Supporters of FACT assert that that it’s necessary because victims are “double-dipping” and receiving compensation from multiple sources. These words sound compelling, but the real “FACT” is that asbestos disease results from the cumulative effect of all exposures to asbestos which occur in a person’s life. A lifetime of asbestos exposures almost always involves many different asbestos products. It is well within a person’s legal rights to seek compensation from each and every product involved in his or her asbestos exposures.
The effort to pass FACT is simply the latest example of companies such as Honeywell, which made untold millions from toxic asbestos products, spending untold millions to limit liability their liability to those whose lives they’ve ruined.
FACT would delay and limit the claims that asbestos disease sufferers can assert. It would also drain the resources of existing asbestos bankruptcy trusts by requiring them to issue quarterly reports and allow companies named in asbestos suits to demand information relating to any and all victims’ claims at any time. All of this ultimately accomplishes one thing these companies greatly want, limiting a victim’s right to compensation.
As Mr. Formuzis states in his blog:
The bitter irony is inescapable: A company dedicated to protecting Americans is one of the biggest supporters of a bill that would put many Americans, including its own customers, at risk. You can bet you won't see a TV commercial advertising that fact. Honeywell should be ashamed.
