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ASBESTOS LITIGATION: Rogers Facing 163 Pending Claims at Dec. 31
Rogers Corporation faced 163 pending asbestos claims as of Dec. 31, 2008, compared with 175 pending claims at Dec. 30, 2007, according to the Company's 2008 annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Company faced 188 pending asbestos claims as of Sept. 28, 2008. (Class Action Reporter, Nov. 21, 2008)
The Company has been named in asbestos litigation primarily in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Mississippi.
Of the 163 claims pending as of Dec. 31, 2008, 55 claims do not specify the amount of damages sought, 104 claims cite jurisdictional amounts, and four claims (or about 2.5 percent of the pending claims) specify the amount of damages sought not based on jurisdictional requirements.
Of these four claims, one claim alleges compensatory and punitive damages of US$20 million; one claim alleges compensatory and punitive damages of US$1 million and an unspecified amount of exemplary damages, interest and costs; and two claims allege compensatory damages of US$65 million and punitive damages of US$60 million. These four claims name between nine and 76 defendants.
Cases involving the Company typically name 50-300 defendants, although some cases have had as few as one and as many as 833 defendants. The Company has obtained dismissals of many of these claims.
For the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2008, the Company was able to have 83 claims dismissed and settled claims. For the fiscal year ended Dec. 30, 2007, about 59 claims were dismissed and 12 were settled. Most costs have been paid by the Company's insurance carriers, including the costs associated with the small number of cases that have been settled.
Those settlements totaled US$1.5 million in 2008, compared with US$2 million for the full year 2007.
Headquartered in Rogers, Conn., Rogers Corporation develops and manufactures high performance, specialty-material-based products for applications including: portable communications, communications infrastructure, computer and office equipment, consumer products, ground transportation, aerospace and defense.
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