WSJ Editorial: The Silicosis Abdication

The Silicosis Abdication. WSJ Editorial
A scam that deserves as much scrutiny as Lerach and Scruggs.
WSJ, Apr 07, 2009

It is going on four years since a Texas judge blew the whistle on widespread silicosis fraud, exposing a ring of doctors and lawyers who ginned up phony litigation to reap jackpot payouts. So where's the enforcement follow-up?

That's an especially apt question given news that New York's State Board for Professional Medical Conduct has finally revoked the license of Dr. Ray Harron. He was among the doctors who Texas Judge Janis Graham Jack showed had fraudulently diagnosed thousands of plaintiffs with silicosis, a rare lung disease. These doctors were later called to testify in Congress, where many, including Dr. Harron, took the Fifth Amendment.

Dr. Harron has since lost his medical licenses in California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Mississippi. This is progress, though hardly sufficient. Among the questions Congress asked state departments of health during the silicosis hearings were why those bodies hadn't moved to shut down these doctors and their mobile X-ray vans at the time they were committing medical malpractice.

New York is belatedly joining the queue, and its order stripping Dr. Harron of his license is particularly noteworthy. After outlining his unethical actions, and citing other medical boards that had denied him a new license, it summarized: "[Dr. Harron] was part of an operation to find plaintiffs with silicosis whether or not they really had silicosis. This is perpetrating a fraud on the courts."

Precisely. The question is what anybody else is doing about it. Judge Jack's findings inspired U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York to convene a grand jury investigation into silicosis fraud. The criminal division of the Texas state attorney general also went this route. We know both juries subpoenaed doctors and documents involved in the Jack case. While these physicians bear responsibility for negligent medical practices, the Jack trial and Congressional hearings made clear that many were taking orders from the trial bar. Dr. Harron has stated in court that he "capitulated" to attorney demands that he include inaccurate language in his silicosis reports.

Yet these grand juries have yet to result in prosecutions. The feds and Texas aside, it would seem incumbent upon New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to follow up on his own state medical board's determination of fraud. A follow-up is especially important given that, prior to their silicosis escapade, these doctors made millions working for trial attorneys on asbestos. According to the Johns Manville Bankruptcy Trust, six of the doctors at the center of the silicosis fraud were also responsible for at least 140,000 asbestos-lawsuit diagnoses. Dr. Harron alone diagnosed an astonishing 51,048 people with asbestos-related disease.

The silicosis litigation machine broke down after Judge Jack's ruling, yet hundreds of thousands of phony asbestos-related diagnoses continue to clog courts. An Ohio state court in 2006 dismissed all cases that relied solely on Dr. Harron, and a federal court in Philadelphia recently did the same. But with medical boards now admitting these doctors were at the center of silicosis schemes to defraud courts, prosecutors ought to pursue their role in asbestos too.

The silicosis and asbestos scams are as corrosive to justice in their way as the cases that resulted in convictions for Bill Lerach, Dickie Scruggs and Melvyn Weiss for kickbacks or bribery. The difference is that these asbestos cases are still in court.