Mesothelioma at Brown Williamson Tobacco Corporation in Louisville, KY (Podcast)

In this episode, John Maher interviews Paul Kelley, partner at Satterley & Kelley law firm, about asbestos exposure at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, a former cigarette manufacturing facility in Louisville, Kentucky. Paul explains how asbestos was present in various parts of the plant, including boilers, pipes, and chemical tanks, leading to exposure for a wide range of employees from construction to maintenance. He discusses the health risks associated with asbestos, including mesothelioma, and highlights the legal options available for affected individuals. For those who worked at Brown & Williamson and have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, consulting with a qualified attorney is essential to pursue timely legal remedies. For more information, visit Satterley & Kelley at SatterleyLaw.com.

John Maher: Hi, I am 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 asbestos and mesothelioma at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation.

Welcome, Paul.

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

Maher: I’m doing well. How are you?

Kelley: Doing great, thank you.

About Brown & Williamson

Maher: So, Paul, tell me a little bit about Brown & Williamson and where they’re located and what they do.

Kelley: Sure. I think everybody probably on some level knows Brown & Williamson. It was a big cigarette manufacturing company, I believe it’s been bought out by another big cigarette manufacturing company within the last several years. But for years and years and years, Brown & Williamson made dozens of brands of cigarettes that people are very familiar with.

I’m here in Kentucky, Kentucky was certainly the center of the universe for a long time with respect to the cigarette manufacturing business. We won’t talk about all of that today. But people might be familiar with the movie. I think of The Insider with Al Pacino years ago about a whistleblower that kind of blew the door off the cigarette industry.

Well, that was Brown & Williamson. And they were headquartered here in Louisville for a long time, 1920s into the late ’90s, I believe, maybe even a little bit later than that. And they had a big manufacturing plant here, and it was opened in the 1920s, it closed in 1982. For those that are familiar with my town, it was located on Hill and 16th Street, and it employed a lot of people for a lot of time.

And then again, the headquarters was here for a lot of years. And sometime in the early ’80s, they built a big office facility to house all of their executives. And as we’ll discuss here in a bit, both of those facilities, certainly the manufacturing plant contained asbestos materials and a lot of folks were exposed.

Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation and Asbestos Exposure

Maher: Okay. Yeah. So, talk a little bit more about that and how the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation is related to this asbestos and mesothelioma claims.

Kelley: Sure. So, just briefly, I’ll talk about the headquarters. It was built in the ’80s. It was built at a time that kind of transitioning from asbestos to non-asbestos materials. But we’ve handled cases where people have discussed drywall and joint compound materials that contain asbestos, and the people, the drywall workers and installers were exposed to asbestos through the mixture of the joint compounds and sanding of the material. And then there certainly were some electrical components, wire, cable, those sort of things that were installed into that facility.

But primarily when we talk about Brown & Williamson, we’re talking about the manufacturing facility. And it was old, it was really old. It was built in the 1920s and it had many additions and renovations, and they would have different lines or brands of cigarettes that were manufactured there. And they had a lot of people that worked there to make these conversions occur for these renovations.

And so, what you had was miles of pipes that carried steam and hot water, hot applications that had a very high temperature rating up to approaching, not quite, but approaching 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. And so, all of those things were insulated with asbestos. You had conduit that carried hot or high temperature wiring cable, and those were insulated with asbestos. There were boilers, or at least one boiler that was in there that was insulated with asbestos. There were all these chemical tanks, giant tanks that contained hot chemicals, volatile chemicals that all contained outer shell of asbestos materials.

And then that was true from probably ’40s and ’50s until they closed the plant down in 1982. And I believe that it was completely torn down in 1986. And I’m confident that it’s still contained a high level of asbestos products even at that point in time.

Types of Employees Who May Have Asbestos Exposure

Maher: So, what were some of the types of employees at Brown & Williamson that may have been exposed to asbestos during their time when they were employed there?

Kelley: Most of the people that were exposed, of course, the people that put it all in, unknowingly put it all in. It’s a wide variety of crafts that do that work, pipe fitters and boiler makers and millwrights and electricians, insulators, of course, bricklayers to the extent that some of these boilers and tanks had firebreak and refractive material. So, everybody that’s involved in the construction aspect of the facility, and in particular any renovations and additions that occurred.

And then moving forward, they had maintenance staff. And the maintenance mechanics conducted a lot of repairs on a lot of the equipment, a lot of the piping and the tanks and the boilers and all of that. And anytime they had to make repairs, they got involved in asbestos, whether it was tearing something out, putting something new in, being by someone else when they were tearing it out.

These pipes came in all different sizes, significant diameter, small diameter, but they’re all covered, completely wrapped. Some of these tanks are relatively small, the size of a little box, and some were 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide, and it had a lot of insulation that was associated with it. So, a lot of the maintenance people.

As the years progressed, a lot of that pipe insulation became very deteriorated. And it can only last so long and it would last for a long time. But we’ve had descriptions of insulation falling down on the production workers. So, they shouldn’t have had anything to do with any asbestos insulation because they’re manufacturing cigarettes operating those machines. But if you’re in an open environment and things are falling on you because it’s deteriorated, lands on the floor, lands on your machine, there’s exposure. One of the devastating impacts of asbestos is it’s insidious.

When it’s there, it’s there. Unless there is a effort, a substantial, costly, responsible effort to remove asbestos, it doesn’t just disappear into the air, it just moves. And so if asbestos settles down on a piece of equipment, the only thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to get stirred up and it’s going to move from place to place. We hear all the time that they would use compressed air to clean up their workstations or any things that spilled, any debris.

And anytime you’re using compressed air or even a burning, you’re moving around. If you’ve got fans, these places were hot, very hot. And so, you got fans that are blowing and it’s just moving the dust back and forth. And we learned in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, the equipment and capability existed to remove asbestos and to keep it clean, but nobody did it. I’ve not seen any evidence that anybody came in and took any concerted effort to really clean asbestos.

So, the point I’m getting at is, is that unfortunately because it was there and because there were many situations where it was removed for a specific purpose, not abated or completely removed, but torn out to conduct some work, deteriorated, it’s there. And because it’s there, if you worked in the plant, you breathed asbestos. It’s a fact. And so, I think everybody that worked there, including just the operators, the people that shouldn’t have had anything to do with any asbestos, they were exposed to, and I think that’s true until they closed the plant down and finally tore it down. I’m sure that they probably had to get many permits from our local government to remove the asbestos before they could even tear it down.

What to Do if You’ve Been Diagnosed with Mesothelioma

Maher: Right. So, if you worked at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, and now you have mesothelioma or asbestosis, what should you do next?

Kelley: So, there’s a couple of different things. Asbestos or mesothelioma in particular, which is what we’re primarily talking about, it’s a fatal disease for virtually everyone. The statistics are not very good in terms of survival rate, but that hasn’t been said. The treatments are better today, much better. And that’s obviously not my job, is to tell people medically what they should do. But there’s a lot of information, there’s a lot of resources out there, and there’s a lot of different ways that you can proceed.

And so, it’s very important for you and your family to consider all options and make the best health plan for you. And that health plan may be right here in Kentucky, or it may be in another place. You’re in Massachusetts, Brigham and Women Hospital in Boston is well known to treat people for mesothelioma, and they’ve got a lot of cutting-edge treatments there. The same is true for Houston, New York, Chicago.

But people have to work with their families and their doctors to figure out the best way to proceed. And there’s no question that really the only thing that’s truly important is your health and determining that. Unfortunately, you have to determine what legal rights you may have. And if you worked at this plant, I think there’s definitely an opportunity to recover compensation that will help you and your family in this difficult time of need.

But the law doesn’t wait for you. You have a relatively short period of time under Kentucky law to pursue a claim. We have what’s called a statute of limitations, and it’s a year from the date that you know or should know you’re injured and the cause of that injury to file your case. So, a year seems like a long time, it’s not. Particularly if it takes you two or three months to really start thinking about it.

So, it’s important to research and try to retain an attorney to help guide you and determine the best course of action for you and your family. And it’s of course, critically important to find somebody that you’re comfortable with, that you feel like is going to fight for you and to do the things that are necessary to help you and your family. And one way you do that is to find somebody that has experience with these places and this particular location, Brown & Williamson, we’ve handled a number of cases there and we know what was there.

And all we really need to do when you meet with us is to kind of figure out your situation. And so, I think it’s very important for you to consult with attorneys and hopefully retain somebody that you feel comfortable with fairly quickly. If you wait three, four, five, six months there’s just a lot of different reasons why that could be devastating on your ability to pursue a claim.

How Fast Can You File a Mesothelioma Claim

Maher: That said, you can file a claim fairly quickly, especially for a place like this where you already know a lot about them and where the asbestos was located and who supplied it and who installed it, things like that. You can move pretty quickly and file a claim, right?

Kelley: Yeah. I mean, we can definitely move quickly and file a claim. So that’s just one part of it. The other part is your ability to participate, and you may literally be the only person that can give a description of your exposure. There may be some coworkers out there, there may be some other people that have personal knowledge.

Your family can’t do it unless your family worked with you. I mean, they may know exactly what you did because you told them, but that’s what we call hearsay. So, the evidence of exposure has to come from the injured party or from a co-worker. And even when it’s coming from co-workers, they didn’t live exactly the same life that you live. They didn’t do exactly the same things that you did.

So, I want you to be able to tell your exposure, how it occurred, tell your story. And doing that early is going to be the best scenario. I mean, you may opt for a surgery that’s going to kind of put you out of commission for, gosh, three, four months. Your health may deteriorate to the point where you can’t give a deposition or you can’t give the time that you want. And so, getting a case filed early on and doing everything that we can do to get that process started is very, very important.

And I mean, again, we don’t want you to just be able to talk about your exposure, but we want you to be able to tell everybody, judge, jury, defense, lawyers, anybody that might take a look at your deposition in the future, you want to be able to tell those people how this has really impacted you, because that’s what this is all about. I mean, this isn’t a type of injury that is a nuisance or an annoyance. I mean, this is life-threatening and impactful. And so, we want for you to be able to have the opportunity to tell everybody how it’s impacted you.

So, we’ve got time, and I can certainly hit the ground running as soon as you come to me and tell me what your exposure is. But it’s better to talk to us within a month or so than six, seven, eight months down the road. It’s going to make it better for you to be able to put on the case that you want to put on and for you to participate in the case. Which, quite frankly, that’s really important for me that you are able to participate in your own case.

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

Kelley: Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

Information About The Law Firm of Satterley & Kelley

Maher: And for more information about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, visit the law firm of Satterley & Kelley at SatterleyLaw.com or call 855-385-9532.