Asbestos at CSX L&N South Louisville Shops

In this episode, Paul Kelley from Satterley & Kelley explains how asbestos may have been present at the former CSX/L&N South Louisville Shops, including in brakes, gaskets, boilers, piping, and insulation. He discusses who may have been exposed and what railroad workers, contractors, or family members diagnosed with mesothelioma should consider when evaluating their legal rights.

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 and Kelley, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos claims. Today we’re talking about mesothelioma and asbestos at CSX L&N South Louisville shops. Welcome, Paul.

Paul Kelley: Hey, John. How you doing this afternoon?

John: I’m doing well, thanks. How are you?

Paul: Doing great. Thank you.

CSX, L&N, and the South Louisville Shops

John: Paul, tell me what we’re talking about here when we say the CSX and L&N.

Paul: So I’m sure that everybody is probably a little bit familiar with CSX. It’s the current rail carrier and that is involved in interstate commerce and we won’t get into a detailed explanation of how railroads work. There’s a lot of jurisdictional issues from railroads out west and railroads east where you are, but at some point they all kind of connect with each other. And historically, those railroads have carried everything that we can imagine from chemicals to goods, anything that needs to be transported in bulk in interstate commerce kind of situation.

CSX over the years has become a very large company and it’s taken over a number of railroads. One of the railroads that took over was the old Louisville and Nashville railroad, which was based here in Louisville, Kentucky. And they had what we call the South Louisville shops. And there are a lot of railroad shops all over the country.

The South Louisville shops in particular was a maintenance facility for all the rail cars and all of the locomotives that were utilized for the train company. And for those people who were from Louisville or Kentucky and in that area, the best frame of reference I can give you is that the old South Louisville shops are where Cardinal Football Stadium is right now. They tore them down about 25, 30 years ago and started to clean up from all the things that were there. And now on Saturdays, we go watch football there.

But back in the early 1900s until probably the late ’80s, early ’90s, it was a locomotive shop at a car shop and a lot of activities cleaning and degreasing and working on all the rail cars happened there for many years.

How Railroad Shops Created Asbestos Exposure Risks

John: So how were the South Louisville shops related to asbestos and mesothelioma claims?

Paul: So there’s a lot of ways that the South Louisville shops were connected to asbestos and mesothelioma. First, a lot of the rail cars had asbestos containing brakes located on them for many years. And the car men and the machinists that worked on those pieces of equipment would’ve changed out brakes. We’ve talked about brakes a lot on various podcasts. You can imagine the size of an asbestos brake on a fairly substantial locomotive or rail car.

And you can also imagine how the stress that’s put on a rail car when it stops, a locomotive when it stops. So that was a pretty frequent activity. Obviously, there are hundreds, thousands of rail cars and locomotives that go through these shops and they all had to be worked on. And at some point in time, many points in time, brakes had to be changed. And for many, many years, probably from the ’40s and ’50s into the 1980s and ’90s, those brakes contain asbestos.

There were also gaskets, engine gaskets that were located on the locomotives, and those gaskets contained asbestos for many years.

And the machinists are kind of the railroads term for a mechanic. And so the machinists were the ones that worked on the locomotives in particular to perform engine repairs, and they would come into contact with engine gaskets on a frequent basis and have to remove, replace, tear off, and they could get an exposure that way. Of course, back in the old days, you had steam locomotives. We haven’t seen that in a long time, but back in the day when locomotives were operated by steam as opposed to diesel, they had boilers and turbines that were associated with these locomotives and frequently those were insulated and contained a variety of asbestos containing materials.

Now, the steam engine has been gone for quite a while and in the 40s, 50s, 60s, diesel engines took over, and so you didn’t see boilers and those sort of things. But those are the kinds of things that are associated with just the trains and the train cars themselves.

But in addition, you’ve got this big shop. And when I say big shop, I mean, again, a football field has replaced, football stadium has replaced what used to be there. So they had all kinds of buildings and facilities throughout the South Louisville shops, and they did various things. And so you had shops where the rail cars were worked on, you had shops where the locomotives were worked on.

This facility first began construction, I think, back in 1905, and it was operated for many years, and it was renovated and upgraded. And at one time or another, asbestos was introduced into the facility, similarly to what we’ve discussed in the past with pipe insulation, block insulation on tanks and vessels. The way they used to clean these locomotives, everybody’s seen them. They have tons of grease and grime and dirt, and so they used to spray chemicals on them.

And those chemicals are stored in the plant. Sometimes those chemicals involve a hot process, and there’s miles and miles and miles of piping throughout this facility, and most of that piping was insulated with asbestos for many, many years. In fact, when they closed that site down and the railroad shop was no longer in operation, they had to conduct a fairly significant remediation before University of Louisville and the city could take it over to build a football stadium. And there were all kinds of other things as well from chemicals and oil and those sort of things that had to be dealt with from an environmental standpoint.

But we’ve seen over the years, a number of people who worked in those shops who were exposed to asbestos in a variety of ways, and probably the biggest are the folks that worked on the rail cars and the locomotives themselves, or people who had to work in the shops and typically in maintenance. As you can imagine, a operation like that needed to be a well-oiled machine, so to speak. And it required dozens of people and crafts to make sure that it was operating.

And so we would see a lot of maintenance people who would have daily interaction with the pipe insulation or insulation on some of the vessels and tanks that held various things. And then of course, anybody that was participated in the construction and the renovation of the facility, and there were always all kinds of crafts and various expertise that came into the facility to do certain work.

And there was so much of it that was there, there was a great opportunity for people to be exposed.

Who Could Have Been Exposed at the South Louisville Shops?

John: Was it mostly those people who worked directly with things like the brakes and the gaskets and the boilers and directly with the insulation pipes in the shop that would have been exposed to asbestos? Or could anybody who worked at that shop have been exposed?

Paul: Anyone who worked in the general vicinity of other work with asbestos components that was being done was going to be exposed. I don’t see how anybody who worked in the shops on a daily basis could avoid asbestos exposure from things that were occurring in the shops. One thing that we haven’t discussed is all these buildings, of course, rail cars and locomotives drive straight through the buildings. It’s a necessity and they are coming in and out all day, every day, 365 days a year.

The amount of force that occurs when they drive through these facilities and it shakes everything that’s there. And any asbestos located on piping that’s above is going to be impacted by trains coming through and creating force and vibration and those sort of things. So when you think of it like that, there simply was no way for anyone to be able to avoid exposure in some way when it was occurring just by virtue of the trains coming in.

And then certainly when people are intentionally disturbing pipe insulation or the block insulation, anybody that’s quite frankly within a thousand yards is going to receive an exposure in some way. And that was a daily event for many years, or certainly a weekly event for many years. Now, the folks who worked on the cars and the locomotives themselves, that might have been a little bit more isolated operation.

So perhaps not everybody would be exposed to those materials on a regular basis, but certainly some of the descriptions that we’ve heard from people that work there is they’re using compressed air to blow out brake drums, to blow out wheel assemblies, just clean off the locomotives themselves and get all the dust and dirt off before they start doing their work. Once you start blowing things around, introducing that type of activity into an industrial setting like that, it’s going to produce a significant amount of dust and that’s going to increase the universe of people who are being exposed to that dust.

And that happened, quite frankly, for decades of that facility.

Legal Options After a Mesothelioma Diagnosis

John: So if you worked at the L&N South Louisville shops, later CSX, and now you have mesothelioma, what should you do?

Paul: So one important point is that CSX, L&N, all railroad companies are a little bit unique in that many times when we’re talking about a factory or a powerhouse and we’re talking about employees that were directly employed in those facilities, they can’t file a lawsuit against their employer. There are other laws and systems that are in place. With respect to railroad employees, particularly the railroad employees that did the types of things that we’ve discussed, they have a direct lawsuit that they can file against their employer under what’s called the Federal Employer’s Liability Act. And so that’s an important point for anyone that worked in that kind of setting to understand that they have a lawsuit. Now, once someone’s diagnosed with cancer and specifically mesothelioma, I think at that point, the most important thing is for those people to get with the right people that can help them.

And that means getting with the right doctors that can assist you and your family in determining the proper and the best medical treatment and course of treatment for you. And there’s a lot of things out there that are available depending on your age, depending on what stage your cancer’s in, and certainly depending on what your personal tolerance and preference is. So it’s important to get with the right doctors and conduct your research and make sure that you’re doing what you and your family think is best for you medically.

Now, for people who were railroad employees, and this is a little bit different than what we’ve discussed in the past, they have three years to file a lawsuit, and that’s a good thing. The more time certainly to understand how you’re exposed and to be able to evaluate what you want to do is a good thing.

But just because you have more time under this particular law to pursue a case is not a reason to sit around and waiting to see what might happen because medically the situation’s no different whether someone’s exposed to the railroad or whether someone’s exposed in a different kind of factory. And unfortunately, John, the statistics are not particularly great in the outcome for people who’ve been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the statistics indicate that they have about six to 18 months survival rate from the date of diagnosis, and so that means people need to move quick.

Typically, given the timeframe that we’re talking about, the type of people that might come to us or might have a case arising out of that plant, they’re going to be older, 70s, 80s, even 90s, and the older that people are and other problems that they have, the more difficult it is to battle this cancer.

And so it’s very important to assess your legal rights while you and your family are trying to determine what medical treatment you should receive and how you should attack that. So our recommendation is to certainly hit the ground running, do your research, find all of the people that you feel comfortable with, the people that can help you. And that means the doctors to help you medically, and that means the lawyers who can assist you and guide you through the legal process, if that’s what you want to do.

And for you and your family, I highly recommend at least conducting an investigation to determine whether pursuing claims is going to be worthwhile for you and going to assist you and your family. This type of litigation, it can be complicated. There are unique laws associated with these Federal Employers Liability Act. There are unique pieces of evidence concerning this particular facility, and I certainly think it’s important to be able to get with lawyers who have had some experience with this facility and have developed a lot of evidence already.

And that’s where we kind of come with a unique perspective and a unique experience is we’ve litigated out this South Louisville shops for a variety of different things, not just asbestos related matters, but other harmful substances. And we, quite frankly, probably have 90% of what we would need to be able to pursue a claim on somebody’s behalf as long as they’re able to testify and explain their exposure.

So we want our clients to be able to participate in the case, and that’s why it’s so important to move quickly. We understand and certainly sympathize with everyone considering this kick in the gut that people receive when they get diagnosed with mesothelioma, but unfortunately, time doesn’t wait for you. And if you are not a railroad employee, then all of the things that we’ve talked about in the past in terms of Kentucky’s one year statute of limitations applies.

The Federal Employers Liability Act only applies to people that were actually employed by the railroad and engaged in activities that historically have involved exposure to asbestos. But if you had outside contractors that came in, then they have a one-year statute of limitations from essentially date of diagnosis. If you have, sometimes we’ve had cases involving family members of the carmen or the machinist and electricians and other crafts that worked in the railroad, they would only have a year.

And if you’re not the one who was doing this work day in and day out, either because you’re a contractor that worked in the facility or you’re a family member of someone who did, you’re not going to have the same knowledge that the employees had in terms of what work they did, where things were. And so that’s why it’s even more important in that context to start your investigation because frequently people that were not direct employees, they just have no clue.

They find out that they’ve been diagnosed with this cancer and we’re like, “Well, I didn’t do that for a living, so I don’t understand how I could have been exposed. I don’t understand how it could cause me a disease.” If you’ve got someone who was an outside contractor, like an electrician or a millwright, insulator, carpenter, whatever, there’s a good chance that those folks were exposed at other places, and that may be important as well. And there’s also a possibility that a lifelong railroad employee had different types of exposures, whether it was from a prior occupation, a subsequent occupation, some sort of personal hobby or side work that they did.

So there’s so many things involved, and that’s why it’s important to pursue your legal rights and find people that can guide you through this difficult process that you and your family are going through at quite frankly, one of the most devastating times of your life.

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

Paul: Thank you, John.

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