Jury: BNSF Railway contributed to 2 deaths in Montana town where asbestos sickened thousands

HELENA, Mont. — A federal jury said Monday that BNSF Railway contributed to the deaths of two people who were exposed to asbestos decades ago when contaminated mining equipment was shipped through a Montana town, sickening thousands.

The jury awarded $4 million each in compensatory damages to the estates of the two plaintiffs, who died in 2020. Jurors said asbestos-contaminated vermiculite that spilled into the rail yard in the town of Libby, Montana, was a substantial factor in the plaintiffs’ illnesses. and deaths.

Relatives of the two victims hugged their lawyers after the verdict was announced. An attorney for the plaintiffs said the ruling carried some responsibility, but a family member told The Associated Press that no amount of money could replace her lost sister.

“I’d rather have her than all the money in the world,” Judith Hemphill said of her sister, Joyce Walder.

The jury did not find that BNSF acted intentionally or with indifference, so no damages were awarded. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. from Warren Buffett acquired BNSF in 2010, twenty years after WR Grace & Co.’s vermiculite mine near Libby was closed and stopped shipping the contaminated product.

Lawyers for the estates of the two victims had argued that the railroad company knew the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite was dangerous and had failed to clean it up. Residents have described dust from the rail yard blowing through downtown Libby. Both died of mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer linked to asbestos exposure.

The pollution in Libby has been cleaned up largely at government expense. But the long time frame in which asbestos-related diseases develop means that people previously exposed are likely to remain ill for years, health officials say.

The case in federal civil court over the two deaths was the first of numerous lawsuits against the Texas-based railroad to go to trial over its past activities in Libby. Current and former residents of the small town near the U.S.-Canada border want BNSF held accountable. They accuse the company of playing a role in asbestos exposure, which health officials say has killed hundreds of people and sickened thousands.

“This is good news. This is the first case that holds the railroad company liable for what they did,” said Mark Lanier, attorney for the estates of Walder and Hemphill.

The railroad is considering appealing, a BNSF spokesman said, calling it a “very sad case.”

“They (the jury) had the difficult task of assessing behavior that occurred more than 50 years ago, before BNSF ever existed,” said Kendall Sloan, the railroad’s director of external communications.

BNSF attorney Chad Knight told jurors last week that the railroad’s employees were unaware the vermiculite was filled with dangerous microscopic asbestos fibers.

“In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, no one in the public suspected there might be health problems,” Knight said Friday.

The railway company’s experts also suggested at trial that the plaintiffs could have been exposed to asbestos elsewhere.

The railroad said it was legally required to ship the vermiculite, which was used for insulation and other commercial purposes, and that WR Grace employees had concealed the health risks from the railroad.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris had instructed the jury that the railroad could only be negligent based on its actions at the Libby Railyard, and not for transporting the vermiculite.

Former Libby resident Bill Johnston, who followed the trial, said he was pleased the victims’ estates received a significant reward.

Johnston, 67, remembers playing in piles of vermiculite in the rail yard as a child and helping his father pile the material in their vegetable garden, where it was used as a soil conditioner. He, his two siblings and their parents have all been diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases, Johnston said Monday.

“They did nothing intentionally to cause this damage to their bodies. Other people knew about it and they didn’t care,” he said of the asbestos victims in Libby. “What’s that worth? It’s hard to put a value on that. But if you say that you will die prematurely or that whatever life you have left will be tied to an oxygen tank, there should be some value that ultimately makes their lives easier.

BNSF was formed in 1995 from the merger of the Burlington Northern Railway, which operated in Libby for decades, and the Santa Fe Pacific Corporation.

Above the proceedings was WR Grace, who operated the vermiculite mine on a mountaintop seven miles outside Libby until it closed in 1990. The Maryland-based company played a central role in Libby’s tragedy and has paid out significant settlements to the victims.

Morris called the chemical company “the elephant in the room” during the BNSF trial and repeatedly reminded jurors that the case was about the railroad’s conduct, not W.R. Grace’s separate liability.

Federal prosecutors in 2005 charged W.R. Grace and company executives with criminal charges over the Libby contamination. A jury acquitted them after a 2009 trial.

The Environmental Protection Agency came to Libby after news reports in 1999 of illnesses and deaths among miners and their families. In 2009, the agency declared the first-ever public health emergency in Libby under the federal Superfund cleanup program.

A second trial against the railroad over the death of a Libby resident is scheduled for May in federal court in Missoula.