This week, a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee delayed a vote on a bill that would supposedly limit fraudulent asbestos injury claims. Many wanted it to go forward but some, however, are calling it an “anti-victim” bill that would seriously impact those that are truly suffering from asbestos-related injuries.

According to an article in The Hill, Capitol Hill’s daily newspaper, Representative Spencer Bachus, a Republican from Alabama, postponed the vote for at least a month, concerned about the legislation and citing the need to hear further testimony from people who have been touched by asbestos diseases like mesothelioma cancer, often caused by on-the-job exposure to the carcinogen.

Other Republicans had urged Bachus to let the voting proceed, especially after hearing the March 13 testimony of former judge Peggy L. Abelman, who told listeners that victims were “double-dipping” – obtaining money from trust funds of bankrupt companies while also suing other businesses by providing alternate information about their asbestos exposure.

Bachus noted that many of his Democratic colleagues expressed concern that no actual sufferers had even testified in front of the committee, including the widows of two victims that Bachus had introduced from the audience at the last hearing. In addition, these same women contacted the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law leadership after learning the bill was scheduled to go forward without them, asking that they have a chance to be heard.

“You claim that this bill is about victims. Yet, despite holding several hearings since the FACT Act was first introduced last Congress, you have never heard from a single victim of asbestos exposure,” they wrote in the letter. “We felt like the ‘invisible people’ in that hearing room last week. Everybody talked about us, but it was starkly clear that our views … are irrelevant and unnecessary in this process.”

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