The age of toxic torts appears to be upon us. According to Richard K. Willard, Chief of the Justice Department's Civil Division, toxic tort claims against the federal government alone over the next 10 years excluding asbestos claims will top $200 billion—larger than the current federal budget deficit! (See Legal Times, Feb. 27, 1984, at 2, col. 1.) Even if Mr. Willard was generous in his estimates, it is clear that private industry and the government will soon have to defend more and larger claims for compensation for injuries from toxic substances. Pending claims for exposure to toxic substances in the workplace, for example, to asbestos, and for exposure to toxic consumer products, for example, to the drug diethystilbestrol (DES), involve thousands of plaintiffs and billions of dollars in alleged damages. Toxic tort suits based on environmental exposure have been less prominent, perhaps in part because it is more difficult to document long-term exposure to chemicals in the environment than it is in the workplace, where they are handled daily, or in drugs, which are ingested regularly. Nonetheless, toxic tort suits alleging environmental exposure are in progress (see, e.g., Anderson v. Cryovac, Inc., ELR Pend. Lit. 65758 (Mass. Super. Ct. amended complaint filed May 11, 1982)).

To some the word "toxic torts" conjure up an image of thousands of wrongful injuries without a remedy at law (see infra, Hall, Health Risks From Exposure to Hazardous Wastes, 14 ELR 10118). To others, "toxic torts" connote arbitrary schemes eliminating normal legal safeguards in order to make the chemical and related industries pay billions for poorly defined injuries of uncertain scope and origin (see Garrett, Compensating Victims of Toxic Substances: Issues Concerning Proposed Federal Legislation, 13 ELR 10169 (1983)).