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• Lawyers Bid for Exhibit A as Evidence Surfaces on EBay 

After a heated bidding war on EBay, Mark Lanier recently paid $2,125 to win a 1941 naval machinery manual.

It sounds like a peculiar collecting hobby, but to Lanier it was serious business. The Houston lawyer, who sues companies on behalf of asbestos exposure victims, was bidding against a defense lawyer to get his hands on an evidentiary trophy filled with details on where and how asbestos was used aboard ships.

EBay may be best known as a place to buy bobblehead dolls, ancient Roman coins and millions of other idiosyncratic collectibles, but the world's most famous Internet auction also has become an unlikely source for legal evidence. It's a place where a growing number of lawyers bid--often against each other--for everything from smoking-gun documents to killer products. While "evidence" is not one of EBay's 18,000 product categories, lawyers who know what they are looking for can filter 11 million items by punching in keywords. There are dozens of active "asbestos" auctions every day. Asbestos lawyers aren't the only ones shopping for evidence on EBay. A Los Angeles lawyer preparing lawsuits for lung cancer victims, for instance, recently bought a cache of old cigarette advertisements that he figures he can use to re-create for jurors the atmosphere in which his clients got hooked. . .

It's impossible to know how many lawyers are plying EBay for evidence, but it's hard to believe anyone spends more time--or money--at this form of discovery than Mark Lanier. The Texas lawyer paid $1,025 recently to win a 47-year-old pack of sealed cigarettes believed to have asbestos filters. The 1955 Kent Micronites may become Exhibit A in litigation he is preparing on behalf of more than 20 clients who have asbestos-related cancer and who smoked the brand.

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