Trial starts up against BNSF Railway over asbestos cases
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.
For decades, the W.R. Grace & Co. mine near Libby produced the contaminated vermiculite that exposed residents to asbestos, sickening thousands and leading to the deaths of hundreds.
The estates of Thomas Wells of La Conner, 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 where it was heated to expand it for use as insulation.
The railroad failed to contain the dust from the vermiculite, allowing it — and the asbestos it contained — to be blown around town without warning residents about its dangers, the lawsuit states.
People who lived and worked in Libby breathed in the microscopic needleshaped asbestos fibers that can cause the lung cancer mesothelioma or lung scarring called asbestosis, the lawsuit argues.
Wells, 65, died March 26, 2020, a day after giving a 2 ½-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.
Wells said he was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2019 after feeling an ache in his back and developing a serious cough. Chemotherapy didn’t help, and he had to sell his house to help pay medical bills, he said.
Walder died in October 2020 at the age of 66. 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, according to court records. 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, records said.
BNSF 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.
On Sunday night, the railroad requested a last-minute change of venue, citing a weekend story by The Associated Press about the trial and asbestos contamination in Libby. Attorneys for the railroad said prospective jurors would be prejudiced by the article.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris instead allowed jury selection to proceed after telling attorneys not to talk to the news media during the trial.
Morris also has ruled that BNSF can’t try to shift blame to other companies.