A March 18, 2010, Wall Street Journal editorial analyzes a federal court's judgment in Mississippi against tort lawyers who filed fraudulent asbestos lawsuits:

The jury found that William Guy and Thomas Brock committed fraud as part of an asbestos lawsuit they filed in 2001 against Illinois Central Railroad Co. The jurors concluded that the lawyers knew their clients had lied about taking part in an earlier asbestos suit. And they ordered the lawyers to pay $210,000 in actual damages and—turnabout is fair play—a further $210,000 in punitive damages to Illinois Central.

This is the first time to our knowledge that lawyers have been punished for filing fraudulent asbestos lawsuits. The lack of any such penalty is one reason that U.S. courts are still clogged with frivolous suits decades after the asbestos legal explosion began. Illinois Central deserves credit for persevering in this risky suit and providing other defendants with a roadmap for fighting back....

The Illinois Central suit was an attempt to unfairly double-dip. Having sued in 1995, neither man qualified to sue Illinois Central in 2001 because the new litigation was limited to claims no more than three years old. Yet both became plaintiffs in the suit brought against the railroad by Messrs. Guy and Brock. In 2003 Illinois Central settled with Mr. Turner for $120,000 and Mr. Harried for $90,000. Only after the checks were cut did an Illinois Central investigator discover that both men had also cashed in on the 1995 claim.

The railway sued the two plaintiffs, who said in sworn depositions that they had told their lawyers about the 1995 case but that the attorneys had pressed on anyway. The railway accused the lawyers of spearheading the deception, and last week the jury agreed.

The case also highlights the corrosive network of doctors and lawyers that pumps out health litigation. Among the doctors involved in diagnosing these cases were Ray Harron and James Ballard, who were disgraced in 2005 for their role in supplying bogus silicosis diagnoses. As it happens, Messrs. Turner and Harried had also been plaintiffs in discredited silica disease suits, in addition to their asbestos claims.