HELENA, Mont. — A trial begins Monday against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway over the lung cancer deaths of two people who lived in a small northwestern Montana town 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 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 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 needle-shaped asbestos fibers that can cause the lung cancer mesothelioma or lung scarring called asbestosis, 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.
Wells said he was diagnosed with mesothelioma in the fall of 2019 after feeling an ache in his back and developing a serious cough. Initially, doctors said there might be a surgical treatment, but that was quickly eliminated. Chemotherapy treatment also didn’t help, but he had to sell his house to help cover the 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…
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