HELENA, Mont. — A trial starts Monday versus Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway over the lung cancer deaths of 2 individuals who lived in a little northwestern Montana town where thousands of individuals were exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine.
For years, the W.R. Grace & Co. mine near Libby produced the infected vermiculite that exposed citizens 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, submitted a wrongful death suit in 2021, arguing that BNSF and its business predecessors saved asbestos-laden vermiculite in a big rail lawn in town before shipping it to plants where it was heated to broaden it for usage as insulation.
The railway stoppedworking to include the dust from the vermiculite, permitting it — and the asbestos it consistedof — to be blown around town without caution homeowners about its risks, the suit states.
People who lived and worked in Libby breathed in the tiny needle-shaped asbestos fibers that can cause the lung cancer mesotheliomacancer or lung scarring called asbestosis, the suit argues.
Wells, 65, passedaway on March 26, 2020, a day after offering a 2 1/2-hour taped deposition for the suit, talking about his directexposure throughout seasonal work for the U.S. Forest Service in the Libby location in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He stated his discomfort was excruciating and he felt bad that his kids and pal h