Pfizer May No Longer be Able to Delay Paying Its Asbestos Claims of Nearly $1 Billion

Pfizer, which claims to be the "world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company," is one step closer to paying a nearly one billion dollar settlement of legal claims of harms due to the asbestos products it used to manufacture.Pfizer Settles - More or Less - Some of its Asbestos Liability Most people would not think of Pfizer as a producer of asbestos.  However, the back-story, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and as we discussed here in 2011, is thatPfizer used to have a minerals, pigments and metals division and, in 1968, it bought Quigley Company Inc., which made insulation for heavy industry.Quigley's Insulag contained asbestos.So,Quigley stopped production at its facility in Old Bridge, N.J., in 1992.  When it filed for bankruptcy in 2004, Quigley faced more than 160,000 lawsuits, most related to asbestos product liability.By apparently holding out the legal fiction that Quigley was an independent entity, Pfizer seemed to use to use the bankruptcy filing to delay making any payment of these claims, most of which likely involved illnesses due to asbestos exposure.  As the Inquirer article said,Pfizer has spent the nine years since arguing that bankruptcy law protects it from such lawsuits.notwithstanding the fact that Pfizer itself is hardly bankrupt.But now, as Bloomberg reported (via the New London [CT] Day), Pfizer Inc.'s non-operating Quigley Co. won permission to end almost nine years in bankruptcy under a plan that resolves most a...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: deception Quigley Pfizer mission-hostile management legal settlements asbestos Source Type: blogs