ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how adherence to two bedrock principles of corporate law enabled firms to postpone, limit and even avoid, facing their asbestos liabilities and how victims engaged in legal struggles in which they found themselves catching up with powerful adversaries' use of corporate law to escape the rule of law. Asbestos firms have been key actors throughout the history of asbestos and have exercised a substantial influence in asbestos compensation. The chapter looks at three of these firms that were major players of the asbestos industry since the beginning of the twentieth century and are still in operation: James Hardie, Cape and Eternit. Cape has done business in the United States since the 1930s. It sold its asbestos to various clients through the Union Asbestos and Rubber Company, which was the exclusive distributor of Cape's asbestos in North America. Some of the asbestos originating from Cape's mines was used in a Texas-based plant manufacturing asbestos pipe insulation materials.
