<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"                      <p class=\"imgtitle\"></p>           He&rsquo;s new at this, but Judge Daniel J. Stack is making serious sense.<br /><br />Issued last week, his brief but candid order did much more than tell ragin&rsquo; Cajun Paul Palmer to pursue his eighty asbestos lawsuits in a courthouse closer to his Louisiana home.<br /><br />In nine pages, Judge Stack did his best to bring Madison County&rsquo;s surreal asbestos situation back down to earth. The recently appointed asbestos judge tried to, finally, put things in perspective for all of us.<br /><br />Stack aptly noted that, if all 1,500 or so asbestos lawsuits currently pending in Madison County were to go to trial, the court could in no way handle it. <br /><br />As Stack put it, those trials would hoist an &ldquo;astronomical burden&rdquo; upon local taxpayers.<br /><br />That&rsquo;s an understatement. Holding 1,500 trials would be more impossible than &ldquo;astronomical.&rdquo;<br /><br />Then, in rebutting the suggestion by Palmer&rsquo;s attorneys that, while Madison County would not be a convenient venue for trial, it would indeed be a just peachy place for this Louisiana plaintiff to settle, Stack whacked it out of the park.<br /><br />&ldquo;It is not the function of the courts to make money,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;It is the function of the courts to administer justice&rdquo;<br /><br />And justice is not served, Stack wrote, when judges push defendants to settle because trials are too expensive for the local courts.<br /><br />It has gone unsaid until now, but in Madison County, settlement has been the only practical option for a system overwhelmed.<br /><br />Stack&rsquo;s position is remarkable when compared with the record of Judge Nicholas Byron, his asbestos predecessor. Before stepping down over the summer, he ruled the docket with the opposite view. <br /><br />Byron&rsquo;s pro-settlement bias created what Stack dubbed the &ldquo;cash cow,&rdquo; generating millions in asbestos lawsuit filing fees for the county.<br /><br />Defense attorneys would say Byron&rsquo;s approach also generated little justice. <br /><br />We&rsquo;re hopeful Judge Stack&rsquo;s finally will.<br />"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://madisonrecord.com/stories/510558724-hurrah-judge-stack>