A King County jury awarded earlier this month $13.5 million to the estate and the family of a former Longview Fibre worker who died from mesothelioma caused by asbestos exposure in the workplace.
Longview Fibre was not named in the lawsuit. Instead, a company that made asbestos and another company that delivered asbestos to Longview Fibre were sued.
The complaint
The worker, Robert Conner, was exposed to a variety of asbestos products between the 1960s and 1980, according to a complaint filed in King County Superior Court in January 2024 by attorneys from Seattle-based law firm Oslund Udo Little.
Plantiffs report Conner was diagnosed with mesothelioma in December 2023 and died March 2024. After his death, his wife, Dorothy Conner, took over as plaintiff in the case.
The original complaint named 20 companies including Union Carbide and Elementis Chemicals, but most were dismissed.
Union Carbide sold raw asbestos and two predecessors of Elementis Chemicals delivered it to Longview Fibre, according to court records. The jury found both companies guilty of negligence and declared that their negligence was a significant factor in Robert Conner's injury.
The jury awarded $5.5 million to Robert Conner's estate, $5 million to Dorothy Conner and $3 million to their children.
Dangers of asbestos
Union Carbide argued that it was impossible to prove whether its asbestos was specifically responsible for Robert Conner's death because another brand, J-M Paperbestos, was also present at Longview Fibre's mills.
Elementis Chemicals argued that all the responsibility should go to Longview Fibre, not companies that worked with the mill, for failing to warn workers about the known risks of asbestos exposure.
Breathing in asbestos fibers can cause lung cancer, mesothelioma or a form of scarring called asbestosis that is often fatal. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration reported that there is no safe level of asbestos exposure, which can cause mesothelioma after only a few days.
Although short exposures can cause mesothelioma, symptoms may not appear for 30-40 years, the Centers for Disease Control reported.
Robert Conner worked as an electrician at each of Longview Fibre's four mills, which put him near paper-making machines where workers "either threw entire bags of asbestos into the machines or sliced open the bags and poured the raw asbestos into the machines," according to court documents.
Dorothy Conner said he also worked as a member of yard crew, which cleaned mill sites and discarded empty bags of asbestos, but a coworker testified that he did not.
While he was employed, plaintiffs say Longview Fibre, Union Carbide and Elementis Chemicals were all aware of the dangers of asbestos.
A Longview Fibre representative told The Daily News in 2002 that it used asbestos to control pitch produced during the wood pulping process, which could discolor or deform sheets of paper. At the time of the interview, the company was involved in almost 300 asbestos-related lawsuits, most of which were in Illinois.
Today, the Longview Fibre site is Smurfit WestRock. KapStone announced the purchase of Longview Fibre in 2013. In 2018, a merger between KapStone and WestRock was approved. In 2023, WestRock merged with Smurfit Kappa.
