Lawyers for Warren Buffett’s railroad told a jury Friday that the railroad should not be held liable for transporting asbestos into a Montana town that sickened and even killed hundreds of people. He appears to be claiming that there is no such thing.
BNSF Railroad, the nation’s largest freight railroad, had been building for decades from nearby mines in Libby, Montana, before Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought it and took it private in 2010. He claimed that he did not know that the vermiculite he transported was filled with harmful substances.According to the fine asbestos fibers luck.
How much did BNSF know about the health risks posed by these shipments dating back to at least 2009, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first declared a public health emergency due to the Libby site? Was it at the center of a weeks-long civil trial that began? Fortune magazine reported on April 8th.
Health officials concluded that contaminated vermiculite, a naturally occurring mineral often used on construction sites, sickened more than 3,000 people and killed hundreds.
by mayo clinicExposure to asbestos fibers “can cause scarring of lung tissue and shortness of breath,” which can lead to asbestosis and other forms of a condition called lung cancer.
Thomas Wells’ estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit against BNSF in 2021. Mr. Wells worked in the Libby area of the U.S. Forest Service from 1976 to 1978 when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive form of lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure.He is 65 years old according to scripps news.
“I’m in so much pain and things are getting worse,” the former middle school teacher from Oregon said in a video testimony filmed from her hospital bed in March 2020, four months after her cancer diagnosis. That’s all I can see.”
He died a day later.
A video of Wells’ last words was played to the jury.
The family of another plaintiff, Joyce Walder, also played in the same area in her youth before dying of mesothelioma less than a month after her diagnosis at age 66, Scripps reported. .
“I hope that no one ever has to see the light of hope disappear in the eyes of a parent or loved one. It will never be forgotten,” Walder’s daughter Chandra Zeckmeister said Monday, according to Scripps. That’s not true,” he testified.
BNSF representatives did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Also at the center of the lawsuit is W.R. Grace & Co., a chemical company that operated a mountaintop vermiculite mine just a few miles from Libby until it closed in 1990, Fortune said.
The Maryland-based company has already paid large settlements to victims, and in 2007 paid a $34 million bankruptcy settlement to cover the cost of cleaning up 32 Superfund sites across the country. .
EPA’s Superfund program allows federal agencies to clean up contaminated sites.
Authorities investigated Libby in 1999 after news reports about a dusty vehicle yard. In 2009, Libby declared the nation’s first public health emergency under the federal government’s Superfund cleanup program, Fortune reported.
The Libby contamination has since been cleaned up, but the cost was largely borne by the public.
Throughout the trial, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris frequently reminded jurors that WR Grace’s responsibilities were separate from BNSF’s, Fortune reported.
WR Grace executives had already faced criminal charges over pollution in a small Montana town near the U.S.-Canada border, but were acquitted at trial in 2009.
According to Fortune, BNSF is required by law to ship the vermiculite it used for insulation and other commercial purposes, and argued that WR Grace was not being upfront about asbestos contamination.
Former railroad workers said in testimony and depositions that they were unaware of the health risks associated with asbestos exposure.
