Akron rubber worker heirs inquire about settlement

When Hope Fuller recently heard about a settlement for the heirs of Akron rubber workers, she searched the list and was pleased to find her father’s name.

John Oakes worked for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for 36 years and died of lung cancer and other diseases related to asbestos exposure at his job.

“He should get something,” said Fuller, who lives in Akron and is Oakes’ only surviving heir. “He suffered quite a bit.”

Fuller is among the heirs who have been identified as eligible for payments through a $72.5 million settlement with Eastern Magnesia Talc or Emtal, a Delaware company that supplied talc to the rubber companies.

The talc, which was used to keep rubber from sticking, contained asbestos — a fact the company lied about and hid for many years from the rubber shops it supplied, the attorneys and plaintiffs suing them, and the courts.

Bevan & Associates, the Boston Township law firm handling the talc settlement, has received nearly 1,100 calls since the Beacon Journal published articles last month about the settlement. The company has identified

Workers at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. handled uncured raw rubber that was dusted with talc, or soapstone, to prevent the uncured rubber from sticking to machinery or other slabs of rubber.

1,600 new heirs of rubber workers.

The response was more than the firm expected and kept its 55-member staff busy for several weeks.

“It certainly spurred a lot of interest – and we’ve taken a lot of calls and identified a lot of new rubber worker cases,” said Tom Bevan, one of the attorneys assisting with the settlement.

Several heirs of Akron rubber workers had sued Emtal in federal court, accusing the company and its attorneys of covering up how its talc contained asbestos, which causes cancer and other diseases, sickening employees exposed to it and, in some cases, resulting in their deaths. Emtal was the biggest supplier of talc or soapstone, as it was

commonly called, to rubber companies from the 1950s to the early 1980s.

The lawsuit resulted in a settlement that will go to rubber workers or their heirs, who will receive payments of between $4,000 and $300,000, depending on the severity of the asbestos-related disease they had.

Bevan & Associates has been working on locating family members of more than 500 rubber workers who may be eligible for payments through the settlement.

From the hundreds of calls the firm received, the attorneys are still determining who is eligible for a settlement. If more than one heir is identified, this will need to be decided in Summit County Probate Court.

Bevan said the first settlement checks will be going out in April and May.

Many of those who called the firm learned they didn’t meet the parameters of this settlement, which included having filed a case against Emtal that was dismissed prior to 2010.

Bevan, however, said the firm still gathered information from those who called in case they might be eligible to be part of future litigation.

“They may still be entitled to pursue other asbestos claims,” he said. “This is not something that’s gone away. It’s a condition that stays with them for the rest of their lives.”

Fuller learned about the talc settlement when her husband read a story in the Beacon Journal. She then looked at the list of rubber workers whose heirs hadn’t been located.

When she saw her father’s name, she called Bevan &

Associates.

John Oakes, her father, retired from Goodyear in 1994. She said he got sick while he was still working there and was diagnosed with lung cancer, emphysema and asbestosis. He died in 1996 at the age of 68.

Fuller has three children, but her father only got to meet her oldest son, who was 4 months old when he died. She said she thinks the talc settlement is important for recognizing not just the suffering of rubber workers who were sickened by asbestos but also what they were deprived of because of their untimely deaths.

“I just hope my dad gets some kind of redemption,” she said. “He was the greatest person in the world — and I feel he missed out on a lot.”

Fuller said she would encourage other heirs of rubber workers to inquire about whether they might be part of the talc settlement or other potential litigation.

Bevan said his firm is still searching for heirs. He pointed, as an example, to a rubber worker who died in Georgia. The rubber worker’s wife died in the 1990s and his only child died about six years ago. The firm is now trying to find his grandchildren.

“Somebody is going to get an interesting phone call from us,” Bevan said.