Mesothelioma at E.I. Dupont in Louisville, KY (Podcast)

In this episode, John Maher interviews Paul Kelley, a partner at Satterley & Kelley, about mesothelioma cases related to asbestos exposure at E.I. DuPont in Louisville, Kentucky. Paul explains the history of the DuPont plant, its use of asbestos in steam lines, chemical tanks, and other equipment, and how this exposure affected workers and contractors. He highlights how various employees, from insulators and laborers to supervisors and office workers, were at risk of exposure. Paul also discusses the importance of early legal action for those diagnosed with mesothelioma, the role of depositions in building a case, and the urgency of filing within the statute of limitations to pursue compensation.

John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher and I’m here today with Paul Kelley. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky personal injury law firm, Satterley & Kelley, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos claims. Today, we’re talking about mesothelioma cases at E.I. DuPont in Louisville, Kentucky. Welcome, Paul.

Paul Kelley: Hey, John. How are you doing today?

John: Good, thanks. How are you?

Paul: Doing great, thank you.

What is E.I. DuPont?

John: So, Paul, tell us a little bit about E.I. DuPont, where they’re located and what they do or did.

Paul: Sure. So, I’m sure everybody’s familiar with DuPont. It’s a big company that still exists today, but as it relates to Louisville, Kentucky, it was a big plant that was built in 1941. It’s in a place that if anybody from Louisville is listening, it’s an area in town called Rubber Town. There were a lot of plants that were built in this area in South Louisville back in the 1940s and 1950s that predominantly supported the war effort, and that’s what this facility was originally built for. Ultimately, over the years, it turned into a chemical plant, and that’s what it did for many years. So, for several years, it was a rubber plant.

For several years, it was a chemical plant, but given the time period that we’re talking about that it was built 1941, this was a period of time in the United States where big manufacturing plants like DuPont were built with lots of asbestos products. The main things that we’ve seen it in with respect to this plant is the steam lines, the piping that ran throughout the plant as well as all of the chemical tanks, the furnaces, ovens, all of the things that utilized in the manufacturing process of some of these chemical processes, and then of course, originally back when they were manufacturing rubber. The chemicals that we’re talking about, these are typically volatile chemicals. They require high temperatures in order to manufacture, and they’re made in the plant.

Lots of the equipment that’s utilized to both manufacture the chemicals as well as to store them were required to withstand high temperatures. So, asbestos was utilized to insulate these tanks and insulate the pieces of equipment that used the manufacturer as well as all the steam lines in order to withstand all of these high temperatures. So, the steam lines were insulated, the storage tanks were insulated, the manufacturing machines were insulated. For many, many years, probably for most of the time through the 1940s, through the 1980s, most of those pieces of equipment and those piping contained asbestos.

We know that from cases that we have litigated out of that plant over the last 20 years or so, we’ve represented a handful of people that both worked for DuPont as well as contractors that worked for other companies and we learned that it was everywhere. I mean, the steam lines, not only did it run through the manufacturing parts of the facility, but it also ran through the change rooms where employees could get changed. It ran through break areas and lunchrooms. So, anytime that there was a potential for somebody to disturb the insulation in any of those areas, I mean, people might be exposed just harmlessly trying to eat their lunch.

What Types of Employees Were At Risk of Exposure?

John: Right, absolutely. Yeah. So, talk a little bit more about those types of employees that might’ve had the most exposure to these pipes and the different places where asbestos was found in the DuPont plant and then maybe some of the other types of workers that might’ve also been exposed, even though maybe they didn’t have as much direct contact.

Paul: Sure. So, I think the people who were exposed the heaviest were more than likely the insulators that insulated facility way back when, really everybody that participated in the construction of the plant in the 1940s, but they’ve had renovations. There was an explosion out there in 1960, 1960, 1961, somewhere in that period of time. That was a significant event because they pretty much had to clean up everything that had been damaged during this explosion, which included lots of these storage tanks and vessels, a lot of the steam lines and pipe insulation.

There were laborers, there were mechanics. People that just generally, they just gave them bags and brooms and equipment and said, “Start cleaning this stuff up.” So those kinds of folks received a heavy, heavy exposure. Then of course, when they rebuilt the areas in the plant that were destroyed, that was 1960. So, there wasn’t anything new or different in 1960 about what they were insulating with during that period of time than when they originally insulated the plant.

John: Right. They just still put asbestos insulation back on the same pipes.

Paul: That’s absolutely right. So, again, the insulators that did it, the carpenters that participated in the construction, the pipe fitters that participate in the construction, the electricians, millwrights, I mean all of those crafts would’ve been or were heavily, heavily exposed during the construction aspect of it. Then as you move forward into the operation of the plant, periods where they weren’t conducting construction per se, but they were still conducting manufacturing operations and other things. Well, I mean there’s all kinds of things that have to be done in a plant. I mean the piping failed from time to time and they had to replace it. Every time somebody had to replace the piping, they would have to remove the insulation.

Sometimes the insulators would do that, sometimes mechanics would do it, sometimes laborers would do it, sometimes millwrights would do it, sometimes the pipe fitters would do it. So, people like that that were directly handling it would be exposed. People that were working in the nearby area when that was occurring, so somebody was working on the lines, actually making the chemical operators, the machine operators, they were certainly exposed. People that worked in the warehouse that are moving things about were secondarily exposed during all of these maintenance activities. The storage tanks and the manufacturing equipment, I mean, those things were frequently down.

Again, the insulation and the asbestos materials that were located on those machines, they couldn’t last forever. So, they had to be replaced from time to time. Sometimes outside contractors would come in and do that work, sometimes plant crafts. So, all those kinds of crafts that we discussed earlier, the pipe fitters, electricians, millwrights, insulators, sometimes they would do it. But the real devastating part about asbestos is that there was a whole group of people who didn’t work with asbestos products that still were exposed in the plant. I mean, you’d have supervisors that never laid a finger on it. You’d have engineers. I mean, this was a sophisticated operation, and it takes lots of highly educated folks to work in a plant like that.

The chemical operators, people that didn’t directly work with any of the materials, but they’re there and they’re being exposed to those things when all of these other crafts are working, doing their jobs. So, they’re having exposure. Outside contractors, of course, there were several outside contractors that directly worked with it, but there were other outside contractors that might not have had a thing to do with any of the asbestos that was in there, but to the extent that somebody else was working with it. Sometimes the plant conditions were so poor because that insulation would just deteriorate. We’ve heard stories about it just dropping from the piping. I mean, imagine the piping 50 feet in the air.

I mean, these plants are absolutely huge plants, football field-sized plants. This insulation sometimes would deteriorate and just fall on the ground and it would hit people. It would land on the floor and it wouldn’t get cleaned up right away. When it did get cleaned up, nobody was doing anything particularly special to clean it up, a broom, compressed air, sometimes an industrial Shop-Vac, but nothing that was appropriate to remove asbestos.

Asbestos In The Air

John: That’s bound to just throw up a whole cloud of asbestos dust into the air as well, that you can’t just clean up with a broom either.

Paul: Sure. I mean, everybody’s seen compressed air used on something at some point. If you spray it off in your car or…

John: …It just moves the dust from one place to another place, but it doesn’t remove it.

Paul: It doesn’t do anything. It just swirls it around, moves it space to space. People are still continuing to get exposed, and then it’s there for the next person the next day. Something else that I think is always important, is always a problem, is that most of these facilities, what they did eventually is one of two things. They either removed it. Okay, that’s great. They had an abatement company come in and they removed the pipe insulation. They removed the piping or they covered it. They took some metal wrapping and they covered it.

But what I’ve infrequently heard, maybe never heard, is that anybody ever hired an abatement company to come in and do a top-to-bottom cleaning of the floors, the rafters, the trusses, the walls, the equipment that they ever came in and used a HEPA-filtered vacuum cleaner and all the latest and greatest safe methods to completely remove asbestos. So, even when technically it wasn’t used anymore or it was wrapped or it wasn’t there, if it wasn’t adequately or appropriately removed from the facility itself, there’s still an ability to be exposed.

I would say that that probably deep into the 1990s, there were people still exposed to asbestos in that plant, certainly not what it was in the ’40s through the ’70s, but I think there’s still certainly people that unknowingly had exposures, because quite frankly, the most appropriate methods to clean and remove it weren’t used.

Were White Collar Workers Exposed to Asbestos?

John: It’s not just the blue-collar workers who are working on those pipes and things like that either. It could have been what we would call the white collar workers who were the secretaries, the managers, the people in the offices. Most of those people would’ve at least walked through the plant at one time or another or multiple times.

Paul: Yeah, I mean, it’s very rare that you would hear somebody work in a place like that and not have reason to go into the plant. I mean, certainly, supervisors and engineers had to be there all the time, but I would think that secretaries and assistants and all kinds of people. The thing about asbestos that is scientifically proven is there is no known safe level of exposure. I mean all of these from OSHA to NIOSH to EPA, the World Health Organization, I mean you name any national or international health or labor organization, none of them have ever said that there’s a safe level of exposure that anybody’s ever been able to figure out. So, the problem is that the medical and scientific literature is absolutely just full of instances where people had relatively small exposures.

Maybe they worked in the plant for a week, that’s it. They developed mesothelioma and that’s what caused it. We’ve seen family members who never actually worked in the plant, but spouses and children of employees that work there and the employees take it home and it’s on their clothes. All they do is shake the clothes out or all they do is handle it and put it into the washing machine or put it into a hamper and they get exposed. It’s never some massive exposure that exceeds all regulatory limits. It’s just this little exposure, but that’s the problem and that’s why it’s a devastating substance. That’s why nobody uses it anymore. That’s why it’s effectively been outlawed in this country and most other countries.

It doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care what your job is. It doesn’t care what you’re wearing. All it cares is if you’re a person and have lungs and a way to breathe and for it to get to your lungs. When it gets there, it stays there. When it stays there, it starts causing the cellular insult that ultimately for some people turns into cancer.

What Should You Do If You Have Mesothelioma?

John: Right. So, if you worked at E.I. DuPont or maybe you were a contractor who just worked in that plant for a certain period of time and now you have mesothelioma, what should you do?

Paul: So, there’s a lot of different things. Unfortunately, mesothelioma in particular is a fatal disease. There is no known cure for it. There are lots of treatments and the treatments have gotten better and people’s lives have been prolonged, but right now, there’s no known treatment that could apply to everybody. So, a lot of people when they get this diagnosis, they have a lot of things they got to work through and they got to figure out the best way for them to be treated. In places like Kentucky, we have a lot of options, but there are different options outside of Kentucky. So, one thing that people have to do is work with their doctors and work with their families to figure out the very best way to treat this cancer for them. Your age has an impact. Your overall health has an impact.

Where you are in the state, the country, all those things have an impact, but certainly the most important thing that anybody can do is make sure that they’re very comfortable and feel like they’re doing what they can do to fight this cancer. So, that’s number one. Number two and not a distant number two and not necessarily this is all chronological, let me get treated and then talk to a lawyer. You have to do all this at the same time. I hate to tell people that, but it’s really important to consult with an attorney, do your research, figure out the best situation for you and your family, find the attorney that you’re comfortable with, who you think is best suited for what it is that you want to accomplish.

That should happen pretty quick, and it should happen pretty quick for a lot of different reasons. We’ll talk about the statute of limitations in a minute, but from a practical standpoint, you have to hit the ground running. As I’ve mentioned, your medical care can be an issue and we don’t want to do anything to interfere with that. The prognosis can be difficult, and it’s important that you can participate in your case. We want for you to be able to tell us just as your lawyer, just us, we want to find out everything there is about you. We want to know about your exposure. We want to know about your family. We want to know what you did for a living. We want to know what you enjoy to do, what you historically have enjoyed to do.

We want to know what limitations you might have now as a result of this cancer. We want to know what makes you tick. What are your fears? What are your concerns? How do you plan on fighting this cancer? What can we do in some way to help you fight that cancer? We want to get information that’s going to help us help you. So, that’s very important. Your ability to do that is best in the beginning. Lots of times, John, people call me and they say, “Paul, I don’t have the slightest idea. I don’t know how I was exposed.” They start guessing. Guessing’s never good. I get it. It’s human nature, but guessing’s never good. I may not know everything there is to know. You may stump me.

There may be some places you worked that I’m not familiar with, but if you worked at this place, for example, I’m very familiar with it. So, you tell me that you work there. Well, then I’ve got 25 questions to ask you that I can figure out pretty quickly how you were exposed. There’s dozens, if not hundreds, of places in the state of Kentucky just like it that I can help you figure it out. We’re going to help you think of things that you’ve never thought of before. It’s not for any reason other than the fact that you weren’t told in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, whenever, you weren’t told, companies didn’t tell you, employers didn’t tell you, manufacturers didn’t tell you, contractors didn’t tell you.

So, we want to be able to help you figure those things out, and we want to be able to do it as quickly as possible because the next step is really important too. The next step is getting your deposition in. A lot of people have never given a deposition before. They don’t know what it is, but basically, it’s very similar to the process of me asking you questions about yourself and how you were exposed. But the difference is now there’s lawyers there and you’re videotaped and there’s a videographer and a stenographer there. They’re taking it all down. We want to create a record. Our sincere hope is that if this case ever goes to trial, that you would be there and you would be able to look the jury in the eye and tell the jury for yourself.

But if something happens and you can’t do that, we take the deposition and we get all that evidence out there. It’s there for us to be able to show a judge and jury later on if that’s what we need, and then the defendants have their opportunity to ask questions. We think that helps in a lot of respects. It helps be successful in the case. Being successful is not necessarily taking a case to trial and getting a verdict. Sometimes being successful is getting a settlement that makes sense for you and your family.

I have met so many people impacted by this devastating disease, and I can’t tell you how many times we walk out of one of these depositions and defense lawyer, somebody representing a company like DuPont taps me on the shoulder and says, “Paul, Mr. Smith was heck of a guy. I mean, he’s going to be tough for us to beat up in front of a jury.” I get that all the time. They’re not going to know that if we wait and wait and wait to take your deposition. So, we want to get information or get information out there that’s going to help you. We want to show everybody that you’re a person, that you’re great person, that you’ve got a good family, and we want to show how this impacts you.

So, it’s important to do those things as early as possible, so that you can participate and give us the very best version of you and get the very best account of everything that’s happened to you. Then certainly, there’s other things for us to do. We want to talk to coworkers. Well, guys, John, some of these exposures go back 50 years.

John: Sure.

Paul: I mean, so if you’re 75, 80 years old when you come to me, your coworkers are going to be in that same range. So, we sometimes struggle to find people that shared the experience with you and can back up what you’ve said. So, doing that earlier, sooner rather than later is always a good thing. So, it’s all very important. Once we talk to you and we figure out how you were exposed and what your role is, then we figure out the best way to proceed with your case. Lots of times when people worked at DuPont, they worked at a bunch of places. So, we’ve got a big pool of defendants. Sometimes when they worked at DuPont, they worked just at DuPont and that shrinks it. But sometimes that can make it easier, sometimes it makes it harder.

But all those things are things that we want to evaluate and I want to get to know you. When somebody hires me, I mean I talk to them once a week, multiple times a week. We text. You’re going to get tired of me. We’re going to talk a lot. That’s what we want to do. Ultimately, it’s very critical that you and your family feel extreme comfort with the lawyer that you’ve hired. That lawyer’s going to do the things that you need in order to be successful. Sometimes that means pushing you to think back. Sometimes that’s pestering you a little bit more than maybe you signed up for and asking you to do some things that’s outside your comfort zone, like giving a deposition, but that’s what you need.

We feel like we are very uniquely situated to be able to do that, particularly for cases in Kentucky and the nearby areas and certainly at DuPont. We are very adept and qualified in order to do that, but it’s just very important that you don’t let a lot of time go by and you talk to a lawyer. Every now and again, there’s just nothing there for whatever reason, but most of the time there is there. You want to be prepared to hit the ground running and have the lawyers that are ready to do that for you.

Do You Record Depositions?

John: Right. Regarding the deposition, do you typically videotape those? If you do and the person is unfortunately maybe bedridden or in a hospital or something like that, are you actually able to take that deposition from them anyway even though they might be bedridden already?

Paul: Absolutely. We of course try to avoid that, but if all else fails and there’s just no other way to do it, yeah, absolutely. I’ve taken depositions in hospitals. I’ve taken depositions in nursing homes. We’ve taken depositions in people’s homes. At some point, I tell everybody, “Look, I know this is unpleasant and I know it’s inconvenient and people don’t like having lawyers coming to their homes and Lord knows the hospitals and the nursing homes hate having all that in their places, but you hired us to do what we have to do in order to help you. If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. Everything that I do on a case, I do it with purpose.”

I ask myself this question, is this going to help us be successful for our client? If the answer is yes, we do it and we do it at whatever cost it takes to get it accomplished. If it can’t happen, it’s not from lack of desire or lack of trying.

How Quickly Do You Need to Start a Mesothelioma Case?

John: How quickly do you need to move on a mesothelioma case? Is there a statute of limitations that requires you to do it within a certain amount of time?

Paul: There is. In Kentucky, we have a year from the date that we know or should know that we have an injury and know or should know the cause of that injury. Those dates are not necessarily the same. You could get diagnosed with the mesothelioma, not have a good idea of what your exposure is, figure that out three months from now. Technically, you’d still be within your statute of limitations, but I don’t like to fool with that. If you file your lawsuit within a year of the diagnosis of your cancer, you’re not going to have any problems being able to maintain your case. So, we want to try to get it filed within that year. The statute of limitations, it’s what we call jurisdictional.

So, if you file it a day late, then there’s nothing a judge can do to let you off the hook. I mean, there are very few exceptions and I mean very few exceptions that could ever exist to allow you to pursue a case. A lot of our judges would love to help you out, but they can’t. So, that’s why you contact the lawyer immediately and that’s why the lawyers want to start moving immediately, so that you can get that case filed as quickly as possible. So, that, A, you don’t come close to running a file of the statute of limitations and then for all the things that we discussed earlier as to why starting sooner is better than later.

How Do You Document Mesothelioma?

John: If you had to have the year from when you first discovered the cause of your injury, how do you even document that? Would that be the first day that they called you and you talked with them and figure out together what the exposure might’ve been and when it happened? Would it go from that date and you have documentation to show that?

Paul: Well, that’s a great question and it’s a little difficult to answer because it’s going to be all different. More than likely that date is going to be sometime before you contacted me because you had some reason to contact me. It could theoretically be after. What we’ve seen a lot is somebody is talking to their doctor and their doctor says, “Well, where were you exposed to asbestos?” The client, patient says, “Guys, I don’t know. I’ve never been exposed to asbestos.” Then later on they do some research and they see… I’ll just use DuPont as an example. They do some research and they see that there was asbestos at DuPont and they didn’t know there was asbestos at DuPont. So, they contact me. Maybe they found it because they found this podcast or found something on the internet about it.

John: Sure.

Paul: They contact me, and they say, “I was diagnosed in July 1st, but I didn’t figure it out until August 1st. I had no idea there was asbestos there.” We get that case filed. For whatever reason, we get it filed August 3rd, a year later, or July 15th, a year later. We would have to argue to the court and give the court some good reason that the client had no clue they were exposed to asbestos and that the client didn’t know that there was asbestos in places they worked and that there was nothing in their life that should have made them aware of that. That’s the trick.

John: That’s why you prefer to do it within the year of when they’re diagnosed because otherwise you just have to go through all these hoops in order to explain why they didn’t know.

Paul: That’s right. Lots of times, sometimes the judge will just make the decision that I think the evidence is clear one way or the other. Sometimes that’s what happens. Lots of times they actually let the jury to decide. So, you actually have a whole trial. Then the first question the jury has asked is, “Do you believe that the plaintiff knew or should have known what the cause of their injury was inside of the year of when they filed the lawsuit?” If the answer is yes, then we get to proceed to the rest of the case. If the answer’s no, then it’s over. So, you see where the problem is. These cases take a long time. They’re very expensive. You could litigate a case for two years, three years, get it to trial, and then have a jury say, “We just think that you should have known sooner and bump your case.”

That’s obviously terrible for everybody. I mean, emotionally, it’s awful for our clients because they never get their day in court. They never get to actually tell the jury or have the jury decide whether they’ve been harmed. It’s terrible for us because we have to go through all that with our client and then the cases are very expensive. I mean, you could spend $100,000 on a case and have it bumped, dismissed for statute of limitations. So, there’s no hard and fast rule, and that’s why you want to file that case as quickly as you possibly can. We’ve been successful more often than not at beating these issues. So, it’s not all lost if you do come to us greater than a year from your diagnosis, but it’s a whole lot easier if you come to us before then.

John: Absolutely. All right. Well, that’s really great information, Paul. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

Paul: No problem, John. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Information About the Law Firm of Satterley & Kelley

John: For more information about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, you can visit the law firm of Satterley & Kelley at satterleylaw.com or call 855-385-9532.