Legislation watch
Most Recent Comments
1) "no vote explanation" [by Admin003 on June 9, 2008]Senator Whitmer, under her constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No. 591 and moved that the statements she made during the discussion of the amendment she offered be printed as her reasons for voting “no.”
The motion prevailed.
Senator Whitmer’s first statement is as follows:
This bill is about asbestos claims. This bill is about giving immunity to a particular company for asbestos claims. This bill was on General Orders a long, long time ago, so you may not recall some of the arguments that were made. Even if you sit on the committee, you may not recall some of the arguments that were made in committee.
I offered this amendment when it was up on General Orders and I would like to discuss it now. My good colleague from the 30th District, the chairman of Judiciary, used the phrase “due diligence” when discussing this bill under General Orders, and that is exactly what this amendment requires companies to due.
Companies that want relief under this act must have acted with due diligence, or as the amendment states, they must have made a reasonably diligent inquiry into potential liabilities before they purchased the company. Due diligence. If we are going to give someone immunity for harming another person, they must have acted with due diligence. That is a legal standard that we impose on every company. That is a legal standard that we should impose today when we talk about taking someone’s’ right when they are hurt.
If we as a legislative body decide that Michigan citizens should be precluded from recovering further asbestos-related injuries, then we should not be rewarding willful ignorance on behalf of the benefiting companies. This is what we discussed at committee—exactly this.
This amendment also allows a judge to rule on this issue as a matter of law, or submit it to a jury if the judge believes there is an issue of material fact. I voted “yes” in committee because it was my impression that we were going to have a good-faith discussion about adoption this very amendment. The committee discussed it, but we have not taken that action and right now is our opportunity to fix this bill to protect the people in the state of Michigan while effectuating some good public policy.
I ask for your support.
Senator Whitmer’s second statement is as follows:
I appreciate the second opportunity to speak. I would just pose the question to the last speaker: If this, as he just said, is an act for one company, is this legislative action that requires a supermajority, 2/3 votes because by his own words, this is an act for one particular company? I would submit that that is a reasonable question to have answered before we take action.
Reply
Senator Gleason’s statement is as follows:
I may not be the only one in this chamber who worked around asbestos, but I did work around asbestos. When I was just starting my career, I was working at the Carn Wettocock plant in Essexville. The turbine was covered with a tremendous amount of aesbetos-laiden insulation to keep the temperature under some control in that turbine room.
We were sent in to remove that insulation so that we could rebuild the turbine in the powerhouse. While we were tearing the insulation out, we weren’t made known of any of the concerns with asbestos at that time. No protective equipment that we could be advised to wear, no respirators, no protective clothing; we weren’t insulated from that deadly substance by any means, the least of which would have been notice that the substance we were working in was potentially deadly.
Now my union brothers and sisters have worked under those conditions, and it was quite unique in that after I had experienced that, a few years later, all of a sudden they started roping off the areas that we had worked in in automobile factories and other plants and facilities around the state. They would rope off an area, maybe 100 feet, with only a yellow cautionary tape. The workers all of a sudden started showing up in equipment completely covering their bodies, giving them some relief with respirators. But we worked in that environment after OSHA was fully aware of what had transpired, and I believe there is some documentation that those who were in the manufacturing of asbestos knew this many, many decades before OSHA was able to weigh in and curtail some of these practices.
We still have several buildings across this state that still have asbestos in them. I commend the sponsor of this amendment for speaking out on behalf of those who not only have to work in the construction industry, but have to go to work every single day in some of these facilities that we are still utilizing. Many of us know that we have schools in our Senate districts that still have asbestos in them and we are trying to remediate these schools making them more technology-friendly and updating them with expansions and reconstructions in the facilities themselves.
I hope that we look at this very cautiously. Even though OSHA has established rules and regulations that our workers must work under, there has been a haphazard enforcement of those regulations, from OSHA in particular. Many times our OSHA regulations go before the NLRB asking for support from the federal government, and I would caution us all to look at the recent history of NLRB to see if they are more concerned about the profits of our major corporations.
I think we should support this amendment because it is ultimately in support of Michigan workers and Michigan taxpayers. We send workers into these public facilities such as schools, in the final analysis, who will be picking up the damages for these injuries and deaths.
I ask the Senate to take a responsible action and support this amendment.
Reply
Introduced in the Senate on June 19, 2007, to limit the liability of a company that had acquired another company that may have produced or sold asbestos in the past to the asset value of the acquired company. In other words, the new owner could not be sued for damages that exceed the value of the assets of the acquired firm that actually brought about the liability
The vote was 21 in favor, 15 opposed and 2 not voting
(Senate Roll Call 375 at Senate Journal 54)
Click here to view bill details.
Reply
View Full Conversation
