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Asbestos Payments Per Resolved Claim Increased 75% in the Past Year

By Mary Elizabeth C. Stern and Lucy P. Allen
December 27, 2012

An annual review of asbestos-related liabilities reported in companies' SEC filings, reveals that from 2010 to 2011, average payments per resolved claim increased 75%. Although this increase in dollars per resolved claim may at first appear to be a dramatic adverse event for defendants, further review of the underlying data suggests that this increase in payments per claim is not due to a significant upward trend in asbestos liabilities. Instead, this increase can be explained by a change in the claim disease mix.

Specifically, the increase in average resolution values per claim is not matched by a comparable increase in total spending ' total indemnity payments are up only 15%. Along with this relatively small increase in total indemnity, there has been a 30% decline in the number of resolved claims in 2011. The modest increase in aggregate asbestos liabilities, along with a larger decrease in resolutions, suggests that this dramatic increase in payment per claim is likely to be the result of a shifting disease mix, with malignancies making up a larger fraction of resolved claims, as fewer non-malignant claims are filed and more pending non-malignant mass filings have been cleared out of companies' backlogs.

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