Methodology
What this site covers, how sources are ranked and verified, how litigation is described, and where the limits are.
Scope
The site covers silicosis and silica-related occupational disease; engineered-stone (quartz countertop) silica exposure; silicosis litigation in the United States, with initial priority on California; publicly reported verdicts and settlements; the manufacturers, distributors and products that appear in that litigation or in regulatory action; state and federal regulation; occupational-health research; and public resources for affected workers and families. Coverage is deliberately narrow so that it can be deep.
Source hierarchy
Sources are ranked, and the rank determines how a fact is used.
| Tier | Examples | How it is used |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Primary | Court records and dockets; statutes and regulations; OSHA, NIOSH, CDC, Cal/OSHA and state health departments; peer-reviewed research and PubMed records; company regulatory filings and official statements | Preferred basis for any material fact |
| 2. High-quality secondary | Major news organisations; established legal and medical publications; universities; recognised professional bodies | Acceptable basis for material facts, attributed |
| 3. Interested party | Plaintiff and defence law firms; legal-marketing sites; industry publications; advocacy organisations | Used with explicit attribution; material claims are independently checked where possible |
| 4. Discovery only | Social media; forums; aggregators; unsourced posts; AI-generated summaries | May point to a lead; never the sole basis for a published fact |
How cases, verdicts and settlements are recorded
The site keeps structured records of publicly documented litigation, published as the litigation tracker, verdict tracker and defendant index, alongside a regulation register, a California timeline, a research timeline and a worker resource directory. All are downloadable from the open data page. Each case record carries, where the information exists: the case name and number, court and jurisdiction, filing date, parties and counsel, the plaintiff's occupation and exposure type, the products or companies involved, diagnosis, current status, trial and verdict dates, verdict amount, whether a settlement was publicly reported, appeal status, and the sources for each of these.
Every record carries a verification status and the date it was last checked. The four labels are: verified, primary source (checked by this project against a court record, statute, agency publication or journal index); verified, secondary source (checked against a major news organisation, professional body or university); reported by an interested party (rests on a law-firm release, trade press or legal-marketing site only); and unverified (listed for completeness, not yet checked). Every source cited by a record is listed in the source registry with its tier, publication date, access date and any limits on how much of it this project could read.
Unknown information stays unknown. Fields are left empty rather than inferred. Settlement amounts are recorded only when they have been publicly reported by a court or a Tier 1 or Tier 2 source; private settlements are noted as "settled, terms not public".
How allegations are described
A complaint is a set of allegations. Until a court has ruled, this site describes what a plaintiff alleges and what a defendant argues, and does not present either as established. Jury verdicts are reported as what the jury found, with the amount, the date and the court, and are labelled as subject to post-trial motions and appeal where that is the case. Headline verdict figures are not presented as typical outcomes.
Legal and medical caution
Statutes of limitation, eligibility, compensation estimates, causation, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment are treated as high-risk topics. They are described in general terms, sourced carefully, and qualified. The site does not publish settlement calculators or predicted case values.
Updates and freshness
Each article shows its publication date and, where relevant, the date it was last updated and the date its sources were last checked. When a material development occurs (a verdict, a new regulation, a new study), the underlying record is updated first and every page that depends on it is revised; a standalone news item is written only when the development justifies it.
Corrections
Errors are corrected on the page, noted where material, and logged. The corrections page describes the process and lists corrections made.
AI assistance and human review
Research, drafting, structuring and technical maintenance are assisted by an AI system (Anthropic's Claude) operated by the editor. The AI is not permitted to invent cases, verdicts, quotes, sources, experts or institutions, and its output is reviewed before publication. The editor is responsible for everything published. Where a page has been reviewed by an external expert, the page will say so and name them; the site does not claim expert review it has not received.
Limitations
- Court records for state cases are not all freely accessible. Where docket-level verification is not possible, the record says so and relies on the best available secondary source.
- Coverage is initially concentrated on California engineered-stone litigation. Other jurisdictions and exposure types are covered less completely.
- Public case counts (for example, state surveillance figures) are understood to be undercounts and are reported with their source and date.
- The site is operated by a small team and is not a substitute for a lawyer, a physician, or an official record.
Questions about this methodology, or evidence that it has not been followed, can be sent to info@silicosislawsuit.com.