HELEN, Mont. (AP) — Thomas Wells ran a half marathon at age 60 and played recreational volleyball until he was 63. At age 65, doctors diagnosed him with mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive lung cancer linked to asbestos exposure.
“I’m in a lot of pain and all I see is it getting worse,” the retired Oregon teacher said in a video deposition recorded in March 2020, four months after his cancer diagnosis. He died a day later.
Portions of Wells’ deposition were replayed Monday in a federal courtroom for a jury hearing a wrongful death case against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway.
The estates of Wells and a second mesothelioma victim accuse the railroad and its predecessors in a lawsuit of polluting Libby, Montana, with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite from a nearby mine that was transported in boxcars through the town’s rail yard isolated for much of the last century. .
Lawyers for BNSF have denied the allegations and are expected to present their defense starting Tuesday. They said railroad officials were unaware the shipments were dangerous.
The cleanup of the contaminated downtown Libby rail yard was largely completed in 2022.
The trial is the first alleging that BNSF exposed members of the Libby community to asbestos fibers that can cause lung scarring and mesothelioma. This comes nearly 25 years after federal authorities descended on the community not far from the Canada-U.S. border following reports of toxic asbestos dust causing numerous deaths and illnesses among mine workers and their families. .
Numerous other lawsuits by asbestos victims have been filed against BNSF.
The WR Grace & Co. mine, operating on a mountaintop outside Libby, produced contaminated vermiculite that health officials say sickened more than 3,000 people and led to the deaths of several hundred people.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 declared the first-ever public health emergency during a Superfund cleanup in Libby. It is one of the deadliest sites in the federal pollution control program. The agency banned remaining industrial uses of asbestos last month.
Wells said in his 2020 deposition that he believed he became ill while working for the U.S. Forest Service in the Libby area for about six months each in 1976-78 and again in 1981. He never went to the vermiculite mine, he said, but described the wind kicking up dust along the railroad tracks at the rail yard.
“It was dusty. You know, you would wash the car and soon you have to wash it again,” Wells said.
The second plaintiff, Joyce Walder, played in the same area in her youth before dying of mesothelioma at age 66.
Mine operator WR Grace repeatedly told the railroad’s predecessors that the product it shipped through Libby was safe, according to BNSF attorney Chad Knight. Local officials also believed the vermiculite was safe and the railroad could not legally reject the loads, he said.
“You have to go back and look at what the information was at the time,” Knight told jurors during his opening statements last week. “Materials from the mine were used throughout the city. No one suspected that there was anything dangerous about these products.
Knight also sought to cast doubt on whether the BNSF rail yard was the source of the plaintiffs’ medical problems, since asbestos dust was prevalent in the Libby area when the mine was in operation.
Contaminated vermiculite has been used on the Libby High School track, on a baseball field next to the rail yard, as a soil amendment in home gardens, and as insulation material in homes across the United States.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys showed jurors several insurance claims for tons of asbestos that escaped from rail cars in the 1970s and did not reach their destination, as well as an example of a sign affixed to a rail car in the late 1970s saying so. contained asbestos fibers and to avoid creating dust.
Libby residents described encountering vermiculite along the BNSF tracks where children in the community often played.
When lifted by the wind or the passage of a train, the asbestos fibers in this vermiculite “can remain suspended in the air for hours or even days, depending on conditions,” said the plaintiffs’ expert Steven Compton, who runs the private laboratory MVA Scientific Consultants in Georgia.
Thomas Wells’ son, Sean Wells, described his father during testimony Friday as a “wonderful teacher” and “simply the best father” who he could talk to about anything and coach their sports teams.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about my dad and wish I could pick up the phone and call him,” Sean Wells said. “He wasn’t just our father. …He was our best friend. We did everything together.
Walder died in October 2020, less than a month after her diagnosis.
She grew up in Libby and may have been exposed to the microscopic needle-shaped asbestos fibers while fishing and floating on a river that passed a place where a conveyor belt loaded vermiculite onto rail cars, according to court records. Additional exposure may also come from playing around a baseball field near the rail yard, walking along the railroad tracks, and spending time at a friend’s house who lived near the rail yard. She also returned to Libby to visit family.
After his diagnosis, Walder underwent chemotherapy and surgery. At a follow-up appointment, Walder’s family learned the cancer was even more serious.
“I hope no one sees the light of hope fade from the eyes of a parent or loved one, because it’s something you’ll never forget,” Walder’s daughter testified Monday, Chandra Zechmeister.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
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