A proposed bill designed to protect a specific Fortune 500 company from asbestos lawsuits was voted down by a Virginia Senate committee on Monday.
The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee voted down the measure 13 to 2 with just one Republican and one Democrat siding with House Speaker William J. Howell, who had quietly worked for much of the legislative session to garner support for the bill, HB629. The Virginia House narrowly passed the bill last month.
The proposal would limit liability for Philadelphia-based Crown Cork & Seal, which employs 300 workers at a pair of plants in Virginia.
The vote came in the last week of the legislative session after company official made an aggressive last-minute push, arguing they would have to close Virginia factories if the bill did not pass.
Howell has a long-standing interest in tort reform and is involved with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that has been pushing the Crown Cork bill in state legislatures across the nation since 2006. Howell served as the group’s national chairman last year.
Crown Cork, which invented the bottle cap, bought a small company, Mundet, for $7 million in 1963. Before the sale, Mundet had been a manufacturer and seller of asbestos pipe covering and block insulation.
Since 2007, Crown Cork has spent more than $100,000 on lobbyists to get the bill passed and donated more than $100,000 to 46 Virginia legislators or their PACs, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in politics.
Asbestos containing products such as those made by Crown Cork’s predecessor, Mundet, when handled in a way that releases asbestos fibers, can cause deadly diseases such as mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lung. Currently, there is no known cure for mesothelioma. Treatments include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.