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HELENA, Mont. — 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 am in great pain and all I see is that this is 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.
Portions of Wells’ statement were played Monday in a federal courtroom for a jury hearing a wrongful death case against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway.
Wells’ heirs and a second mesothelioma victim accuse the railroad and its corporate predecessors in a lawsuit of contaminating Libby, Montana, with asbestos-tainted vermiculite from a nearby mine that was transported through the remote town’s rail yard in railcars during much of the last century. .
BNSF attorneys have denied the allegations. They said railroad officials did not know the shipments were dangerous.
Cleanup of the contaminated rail yard in downtown Libby is largely completed in 2022.
The lawsuit is the first alleging 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 descended on the community not far from the U.S.-Canada border following news reports of toxic asbestos dust causing widespread death and illness among mine workers and their families.
Many other lawsuits by asbestos victims have been filed against BNSF.
Grace WR & The Co. Mine operating on a mountaintop outside Libby produced contaminated vermiculite that health officials said sickened more than 3,000 people and caused several hundred deaths.
In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the first public health emergency during a Superfund cleanup in Libby. It is one of the deadliest sites according to the federal pollution program. The agency last month banned remaining industrial uses of asbestos.
Wells said in the 2020 deposition that he believed he was sick 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 wind kicking up dust along the train tracks in the rail yard.
“There was dust. You know, you’d wash the car and pretty soon you’d 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 corporate predecessors that the product it shipped through Libby was safe, according to BNSF attorney Chad Knight. Local officials also believed that vermiculite was safe and that 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 opening statements last week. “The materials from the mine were used throughout the city. “No one suspected there was anything dangerous in the products.”
Knight has 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.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys showed jurors several insurance claims for tons of asbestos that leaked from railcars in the 1970s and did not reach their destination, and an example of a sign posted on a railcar in the late 1970s. 1970 which said: they contained asbestos fibers and to prevent the formation of dust.
Libby residents have described finding vermiculite along BNSF tracks where children in the community used to play.
When lifted by the wind or a passing train, the asbestos fibers in that vermiculite “can remain airborne for hours, if not days, depending on conditions,” said plaintiffs’ expert Steven Compton. who runs the private laboratory MVA Scientific Consultants in Georgia.
Thomas Wells’ son, Sean Wells, described his father during Friday’s testimony as a “wonderful teacher” and “just the best dad,” who he could talk to about anything and who coached his 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 it all together.”
Walder died in October 2020, less than a month after his diagnosis.
She grew up in Libby and may have been exposed to microscopic needle-like asbestos fibers while fishing and floating in a river that passed by a site where a conveyor belt loaded vermiculite into train cars, according to court records. Additional exposure may also come from playing on a baseball field near the railroad yard, walking on railroad tracks, and spending time at the house of a friend who lived near the railroad yard. She also returned with Libby to visit her family.
After his diagnosis, Walder underwent chemotherapy and surgery. At a follow-up appointment, Walder’s family was told that the cancer had gotten even worse.
“I hope no one has to see the light of hope disappear from the eyes of a parent or a loved one, because that is something you will never forget,” Walder’s daughter, Chandra Zechmeister, testified Monday.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
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