Even decades after the end of most U.S. production of asbestos, litigation against the companies that made it or put it in their products is alive and well in the state courts of New Jersey. John Garde of McCarter & English in Newark, who has been defending asbestos suits for almost 30 years, estimated there were once 9,000 in Middlesex County alone, with smaller numbers in places like Camden and Atlantic Counties. Though there may be fewer cases today, the defendants now being sued are a different and broader assortment of companies, including makers of talc, fertilizer and even cigarettes, raising new questions concerning exposure and causation, according to lawyers.
9.12.2014