Jury selection begins in Buffett trial
BNSF Railway sued over lung cancer deaths
HELENA, Mont. — Jury selection began Monday in a lawsuit against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway over the lung cancer deaths of two people who lived in a small Montana town near the U.s.-canada border where thousands of people were exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine.
The widespread contamination over decades led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 to declare the first-ever public health emergency during a Superfund cleanup. The Libby, Montana, site is one of the deadliest under the program.
The W.R. Grace & Co. mine near Libby produced contaminated vermiculite that exposed residents to asbestos, sickening thousands and leading to the deaths of hundreds.
The estates of Thomas Wells of Laconner, Oregon, and Joyce Walder of Westminster, California, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2021, arguing that BNSF and its corporate predecessors stored asbestos-laden vermiculite in a large rail yard in town before shipping it to plants across the U.S.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the railroad failed to contain dust from the vermiculite, allowing asbestos to be blown around town without warning residents of its dangers. Other lawsuits alleging that BNSF exposed Libby residents to asbestos are still pending, court records show.
The Walder and Wells lawsuit is the first so-called community exposure case to go to trial, almost 25 years after federal authorities arrived in Libby following news reports about widespread deaths and illnesses in the town of about 3,000 people.
People who lived and worked in Libby breathed in the microscopic needle-shaped asbestos fibers that can cause lung scarring and the lung cancer mesothelioma, the lawsuit argues.
Wells, 65, died on March 26,
2020, a day after giving a 2 1/2-hour recorded deposition for the lawsuit, talking about his exposure during seasonal work for the U.S. Forest Service in the Libby area in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He said his pain was intolerable and he felt bad that his sons and friend had to take care of him.
Walderm 66, died in October 2020. She lived in Libby for at least 20 years and could have been exposed to asbestos while fishing and floating on a river that flowed past a spot where vermiculite was loaded onto train cars, court records show. Her exposure may have also come from playing on and watching games on the baseball field near the rail yard or walking along the railroad tracks and occasionally heating up pieces of vermiculite to watch it puff up, court records said.
BNSF Railway, which is owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is expected to argue that there’s no proof Wells and Walder were exposed to asbestos levels above federal limits; that if they were in the rail yard they were trespassing; and that Wells’ and Walder’s medical conditions were not caused by BNSF.