Court upholds finding that Montana clinic submitted false asbestos claims

Matthew Brown, Associated Press

BILLINGS, Montana (AP) — A national appeals tribunal has upheld a little tribunal determination that a Montana wellness session submitted hundreds of mendacious asbestos claims connected behalf of patients.

A assemblage decided past twelvemonth that nan session successful a municipality wherever hundreds of group person died from asbestos vulnerability submitted much than 300 mendacious asbestos claims that made patients eligible for Medicare and different benefits they shouldn’t person received.

The Center for Asbestos Related Disease successful Libby, Montana, had asked nan 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse past year’s ruling. The clinic’s lawyer based on its actions were deemed acceptable by national officials and that nan judge successful nan lawsuit issued erroneous assemblage instructions.

But a three-judge sheet said successful a determination issued precocious Tuesday that nan session couldn’t blasted national officials for its nonaccomplishment to travel nan law. The sheet besides said that Judge Dana Christensen’s assemblage instructions were appropriate.

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The session has received much than $20 cardinal successful national backing and certified much than 3,400 group pinch asbestos-related disease, according to tribunal documents. Most of nan patients for whom mendacious claims were made did not person a test of asbestos-related illness that was confirmed by a radiologist, nan 9th Circuit said.

The lawsuit resulted from a suit brought against nan session by BNSF Railway. The railroad has separately been recovered liable complete contamination successful Libby and is simply a suspect successful hundreds of asbestos-related lawsuits, according to tribunal filings.

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The session was ordered to salary almost $6 cardinal successful penalties and fees pursuing past year’s ruling. However, it won’t person to salary that money nether a colony reached successful bankruptcy tribunal pinch BNSF and nan national government, documents show.

The Libby area was declared a Superfund tract 2 decades agone pursuing media reports that excavation workers and their families were getting sick and dying owed to asbestos particulate from vermiculite that was mined by W.R. Grace & Co. The tainted vermiculite was shipped done nan 3,000-person municipality by obstruction complete decades.

Exposure to moreover a minuscule magnitude of asbestos tin origin lung problems, according to scientists. Asbestos-related diseases tin scope from a thickening of a person’s lung cavity that tin hamper breathing to deadly cancer.

Symptoms tin return decades to develop.