Liability forecasting plays an important role in mass tort settlements. One effect of the four-decades-long asbestos litigation is that defendants in mass tort cases often create large settlement trusts through which they compensate current and future claimants for their injuries. Historically, settlement trusts have encountered two challenges that show the need for their leadership to forecast current and future liabilities.

The first is that the medical injuries caused by dangerous products sometimes manifest years after the exposure or interaction. That means settlement trusts often must remain open and solvent for many decades after the last dangerous product has rolled off an assembly line.