W. R. Grace Asbestos Trial Opens Today

 

Thursday, Mar 05,2009, 3:37:26 PM   Click:

WR Grace asbestos trial to open today: Md. company, former executives accused of Mont. Pollution and cover-up Matthew Hay Brown The Baltimore Sun McClatchy-Tribune Regional News
February 23 - WR Grace & Co. and five former executives go to trial today, accused of exposing a Montana community for decades, a particularly deadly form of asbestos and to conceal what company knew the dangers.

British chemical manufacturer has denied the allegations. Officials of the company, which employs more than 1,100 in Maryland, said that the managers have worked to improve the security of the vermiculite mine and mill it purchased near Libby, Mont., In 1963 and functioned until 1990.

Contamination, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called "the worst environmental disaster in the history of this country," is suspected of having killed at least 250 people and more than 2000 patients. WR Grace, who works under a Chapter 11 reorganization, decided last year to pay $ 250 million - the most ever for a Superfund site - for cleaning.

Opening statements in what should be a three-month trial are scheduled for today in District Court of the United States in Missoula, 100 miles from Libby.

Gayla Benefield, whose parents died of asbestos related diseases, plans to attend for the duration.

"Grace has never owned what happened here," said Benefield, whose father worked at the mine for 19 years before his death at age 62 in 1974. She said she and her husband, none of which worked for Grace, have been diagnosed with illnesses linked to asbestos, as did more than 40 members of their extended family.

"There is a moral responsibility for what they have done to workers, their families and the community," Benefield said by telephone from Libby.

For decades, WR Grace was one of the largest employers in Libby, a town of less than 3000 to approximately 40 miles from the Canadian border. Once the Vermiculite Mountain mine produced 80percent of the world's supply of ore, which has been used in consumer products such as insulation, soil and kitty litter. The company vermiculite residents to use as fill for land for schools as the foundation for an outdoor rink, and as a medium for the growth of vegetable and flower gardens.

But the material was full of asbestos, a natural magnesium silicate, which can cause asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs, mesothelioma, a tumor of the lining of the chest and abdominal cavity, and lung cancer. Asbestos has been banned from most products since 1989.

The form found in Libby is particularly harmful, its long, thin fibers can penetrate deeply into the human body and to remain for decades. As vermiculite was mined and processed, asbestos deadly spread in the community - carried in the clothing worn by workers in the home and dust that spewed from the plant and settled over the city.

In an indictment issued in 2005, the federal government alleges that WR Grace commissioned a series of studies in the years 1970 and 1980 revealed that the risks to which it was to expose workers and neighbors, but retains calm. When a local physician, Dr. Richard Irons, proposed in 1979 that the study of minors' health, according to the indictment, the security company and public health at the Henry A. Eschenbach wrote in an internal memo that "Irons is turning the screws. .. . We'll play the game his way or he will sound the alarm. "

In 1982 a note in response to a mortality study, Eschenbach says: "Our major problem has died of cancer of the airways. This is not a surprise. "

Spokesman Greg Euston company last week declined to comment on the trial, noting the request by Federal District Judge Donald Molloy.

WR Grace devotes several pages on its corporate Web site to "Libby questions and answers, including a timetable of steps that the company says it has taken to protect workers because it has learned the dangers posed by the asbestos. The company says it has spent more than $ 10 million in health care for Libby residents and donated over 2.1 million dollars to a local hospital.

"As a society and individuals, we believe that one serious illness or lost life is one too many," the company said in a statement after the indictment was issued. "It why we took very seriously our commitment to our Libby employees and the people of Libby. ... Although the rules of court prohibit us from commenting on the merits of government expenses, we welcome the development in a court of law. "

The indictment named the company and seven former employees as co-defendants. Each was charged with conspiracy, violations of the Clean Air Act, the son of fraud and obstruction of justice charges and prison sentences of up to 70 years and fines totaling millions dollars. WR Grace could face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

Jury selection began last week in the trial of WR Grace and five co-defendants: Robert Walsh, a former Senior Vice President, Jack W. Wolter, former Vice President; Eschenbach, a former director of health, safety and toxicology, Robert J. Bettacchi, who led the division that the mine, and William J. McCaig, a former CEO of Libby.

Co-accused Mario O. favorites, a former company lawyer, should be tried separately. Co-accused Alan R. Stringer, a former general manager, died in 2007.

WR Grace, which employs 6500 workers in 40 countries, has filed for Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy in 2001. Representatives of the company blamed more than 110,000 asbestos-related lawsuits, most of which were unrelated to the operation Libby. The company agreed last year to an agreement that could lead to $ 3 billion in institutions for the sick by the exposure of its products.

Contamination Libby is one of a series of environmental disasters associated with Grace. The company paid $ 8 million in 1986 to settle claims that it had contaminated the groundwater in the Boston suburb of Woburn, Massachusetts, during the 1970s with chemicals that caused the deaths of five children and a adult, where the center of the book and movie A Civil Action.

The company agreed last year to pay 40 percent of the cost - an estimated $ 41 million - to clean up contamination at Curtis Bay in Baltimore, where he extracted radioactive thorium in the 1950s in the context of a contract with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Radiological tests in the 1980s were "radiation levels in several places, according to a report prepared for the Department of Energy, but most areas are clear and the report concludes that the danger to employees and the public been relatively small.

WR Grace, which traces its origins to the founding of Davison, Kettlewell & Co. in Baltimore in 1832, employs about 500 workers at its global headquarters in Columbia and about 600 in a chemical plant in Curtis Bay. Ten people work in a sales office in Severna Park. WR Grace reported a net profit last year of $ 121.5million, up 37 percent from 2007 sales of $ 3.32 billion.