AUSTRALIAN building products giant CSR has launched a carefully orchestrated media campaign to support its ailing share price in the face of US asbestos-related litigation against it. By Monday investors had wiped A$475 million (about HK$2.48 billion) from CSR's market value since a Mississippi jury awarded US$2 million against it earlier this month, then US$200,000 in punitive damages last week. It closed at $3.94 on Tuesday, down from $4.57 before the jury's decision. On Tuesday the company called in selected journalists and brokers to outline its grounds for appeal and to criticise the US lawyers acting for the litigants, shipyard workers who allegedly inhaled fibres from asbestos supplied to shipbuilder Jones-Manville by CSR. There are 6,700 other plaintiffs in the case, which it is feared could lead to a flood of asbestos-related claims against CSR in the US. CSR says the lawyers are waging a media war against it to try to force it to settle: ''The plaintiff's lawyers are having a field day trying to negotiate an out-of-court settlement because they are desperate to recoup their costs,'' a CSR spokesman said. He said the appeal could be 18 months to two years away and CSR would keep a low profile over the case until then. It would not repeat the full-page advertisements it has been running in daily newspapers announcing its appeal, but ''we will keep talking quietly to leading shareholders and investors''. Yesterday, the day the first of the interviews with CSR appeared, its share price closed at A$4.02, up eight cents. The spokesman said CSR was making no predictions about whether that rise would be sustained, but hoped it would. CSR is to appeal against the judgment on three grounds - jurisdiction, the facts of the case and evidence from the autopsy of a dead worker who received most of the damages payment. The autopsy found traces of white and brown asbestos, but not the blue asbestos CSR exported. CSR denies supplying the asbestos used in the ship gaskets at the centre of the case. It has also rejected reports that it could face new claims in the US over water pipes containing asbestos.
