Asbestos victim’s dying words aired in wrongful death case against Buffet’s railroad

HELENA, Mont. — Thomas Wells ran a half marathon at the age of 60 and played volleyball recreationally 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 high school teacher said in a video statement recorded in March 2020, four months after his cancer diagnosis. He died a day later.

Parts of Wells’ statement were repeated Monday in a federal courtroom before a jury hearing a wrongful death case against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway.

The Wells estates 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, which was transported in freight cars through the rail yard for much of the last century was transported from the remote town. .

BNSF attorneys have denied the claims. They said railroad officials did not know the shipments were dangerous.

Cleanup of the contaminated rail yard in downtown Libby was largely completed in 2022.

The lawsuit is the first to allege that BNSF exposed community members in Libby to asbestos fibers that can cause lung scarring and mesothelioma. It comes nearly 25 years after federal authorities arrived in the community, not far from the U.S.-Canada border, following news reports of toxic asbestos dust causing widespread deaths and illness among miners and their families.

Numerous other lawsuits have been filed by asbestos victims against BNSF.

The W.R. Grace & The Co. mine, which operated on a mountaintop outside Libby, produced contaminated vermiculite that health officials say has sickened more than 3,000 people and led to several hundred deaths.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the first-ever public health emergency in 2009 during a Superfund cleanup in Libby. It is one of the deadliest sites under the federal pollution program. The agency last month banned the remaining industrial use of asbestos.

Wells said in the 2020 statement that he believed he became ill while working for the U.S. Forest Service in the Libby area for about six months 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 in the yard.

“It was dusty. You know, you would wash the car and pretty soon you have to wash the car again,” Wells said.

The second accuser, Joyce Walder, played in the same area in her youth before dying of mesothelioma at the age of 66.

Mine operator WR Grace repeatedly told the railroad’s corporate predecessors that the product shipped through Libby was safe, according to BNSF attorney Chad Knight. Local officials also believed the vermiculite was safe and that the railroad could not legally refuse the loads, he said.

“You have to go back and look at what the information was at the time,” Knight told jurors during opening statements last week. “The materials from the mine were used everywhere in the city. No one suspected there was anything unsafe about the products.”

Knight has also attempted to cast doubt on whether the BNSF yard was the source of the plaintiffs’ medical problems, as asbestos dust was widespread in the Libby area when the mine was operating.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys showed jurors several insurance claims for tons of asbestos that leaked from train cars in the 1970s and did not reach their destination, and an example of a sign placed on a train car in the late 1970s stating that it contained asbestos fibers and to prevent dust formation.

Libby residents have described encountering vermiculite along BNSF tracks where community children often played.

When the asbestos fibers from that vermiculite are kicked up by the wind or by passing trains, “they can remain in the air for hours, if not days, depending on the conditions,” says plaintiff expert Steven Compton, who heads the private laboratory MVA Scientific Consultants in Georgia.

Thomas Wells’ son Sean Wells described his father during testimony Friday as a “great teacher” and “just the best dad,” who he could talk to about anything and coached their sports teams.

“Not a day 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 could have been exposed to the microscopic, needle-shaped asbestos fibers while fishing and floating on a river that passed by a site where a conveyor belt loaded vermiculite onto rail cars, according to court records. Additional exposure can also result from playing on a baseball field near the rail yard, walking along the railroad tracks, and spending time with a friend who lived near the rail yard. She also returned to Libby to visit family.

After her diagnosis, Walder underwent chemotherapy and surgery. During a follow-up appointment, Walder’s family was told that the cancer had returned even worse.

“I hope no one has to see the light of hope fade from the eyes of a parent or loved one, because that is something you will never forget,” Walder’s daughter, Chandra Zechmeister, testified Monday.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Mont.