Mesothelioma at Harvey Aluminum in Lewisport, KY (Podcast)

For years employees, contractors, and visitors to Harvey Aluminum in Lewisport, KY were exposed to dangerous asbestos. Since then, many have been diagnosed with mesothelioma and other asbestos exposure related diseases. Knowing what happened and what your legal rights are is essential for these types of cases.

John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher and I’m here today with Paul Kelly. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky personal injury law firm, Satterley and Kelly, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos clams. And today we’re talking about mesothelioma at Harvey Aluminum in Lewisport, Kentucky. Welcome Paul.

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

John: I’m doing well. How are you?

Paul: Doing very well, thank you.

What is Harvey Aluminum?

John: So Paul, tell us a little bit about Harvey Aluminum, where they’re located and what they do.

Paul: So, Harvey Aluminum is located in Lewisport, Kentucky. It’s actually not called Harvey Aluminum anymore. It’s owned by a company called Aleris, and it’s changed hands a number of times over the years, but when it was built, it was Harvey Aluminum and the plant was built in the mid-1960s, I think 1966, 1967 when it was built and when it went online.

Harvey Aluminum is a aluminum rolling mill. So they take ingots or unfinished pieces of steel, aluminum and they run them through these mills. They flatten them into a piece that then they can ship out and sell to customers and other entities to make whatever it is that they make. And that plant has substantially been in operation for almost 50 years now, pretty much doing the same thing and has unfortunately had a fair amount of mesothelioma claims that have come out of it.

How is Harvey Aluminum Related to Asbestos and Mesothelioma Claims?

John: Okay. Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about that and how Harvey Aluminum is related to asbestos and mesothelioma claims

Paul: So, Harvey Aluminum built in 1966, unfortunately, that’s the timeframe where virtually every industrial plant, manufacturing plant, powerhouse was made with asbestos containing materials.

And the things that we see at Harvey Aluminum are pretty standard for that period of time. A lot of thermal insulation, thermal insulation that was wrapped around the piping, all the steam lines that run through the plant. A lot of the equipment operates off of steam. Steam, very hot hundreds of degrees running through these pipes. And so in order to maintain the internal temperature of the pipes that are wrapped with a high temperature thermal insulation, also to protect people from burning themselves from touching the pipes, this insulation would do that as well.

The problem is that it contained asbestos and when people were exposed to dust from the installation and removal of thermal insulation it would produce dust and people would breathe that dust, it gets deposited in the lungs. And many of those people developed cancer many years down the road.

A lot of the equipment ran off of steam as well. And there were piping that was connected to the rolling mills, and they had furnaces and ovens that also were wrapped in insulation. They had valves and pumps all throughout the plant. The valves would stop and start the flow of steam and chemical processes from flowing through. And so the valves would be necessary to stop and start that when necessary.

Lots of the valves were insulated. They contain asbestos packing that was shoved into the innards of the valves. Sometimes there was insulation that was actually covered the tops of the valves. There were pumps all throughout the plant. The pumps were all stuffed with asbestos packing.

There was something there called pot lines. Pot lines were where sometimes the raw ore was made and those pot lines were insulated. And the insulation contained asbestos gaskets, lots of piping that was connected together by two gaskets. There were flanges and then gaskets went around the flanges. And those gaskets for many, many years contained asbestos.

And so, there was just a wide variety of equipment that contained thermal insulation, contained packing, contained gaskets, contained refractory materials, and all those things throughout the ’60s and ’70s, ’80s. And even today there’s probably still asbestos located in that plant that people who work there at least have a potential to be exposed to.

What Types of Employees Were Exposed to Asbestos?

John: So, you talked about the different places where asbestos was used in the plant. What types of employees might’ve been exposed to asbestos because of that?

Paul: So, we have represented a lot of people that helped build the plant. A lot of millwrights. They millwrights install and set up the equipment like the rolling mills, and they’re around when the insulators, so insulators are exposed, and the insulators are the ones that insulate the pipes and equipment all throughout the plant.

The pipe fitters who install the pipes and also install the gaskets that we’ve talked about. They were heavily exposed group. You had electricians that were there for all the various installation of electrical equipment, cable, and then they’re being exposed both to the things that they’re installing. A lot of the wire and cable contain asbestos. But they’re also exposed during the installation process and during the gasket installation, during the packing installation. So a lot of the folks participate in construction.

In addition, you’ve got a huge maintenance staff to keep a plant like that. In operation they can’t afford to have downtime and so they had a maintenance staff that would fix pipes if pipes got busted. If a pipe carrying a hot temperature chemical or a high temperature steam broke, needed to be replaced or worked on in some way, they had to take the insulation off. And so the people that worked on those, usually just the maintenance staff, and they were heavily exposed.

The operators, the operators of all the equipment that worked in the plant. This equipment isn’t just some silent piece of equipment that is harmless and doesn’t do anything. The buildings vibrate, shake, any insulation that comes off of it. The operators are exposed. Sometimes they’re around when the maintenance staff is working on things that contain asbestos. So all the operators of the various equipment.

They had numerous additions, renovations, retrofitting of the plant. And so they had various outside contractors that came in and did a lot of work with the pipes, did a lot of work with the equipment, a lot of work with gaskets and valves and packing and pumps. And so all the same trades that worked in there during the construction process, the mill rights, insulators, electricians, pipe fitters, those kinds of crafts came in later on and did work in the facility. And they were exposed. We would see people who were more professional types, engineers, plant managers, superintendents.

Mesothelioma or asbestos and then the diseases that are caused by asbestos, predominantly mesothelioma, it doesn’t care what your job title is. All it cares about is what your exposure is. And so if you show up in a shirt and tie every day because that was your job, but there’s lots of asbestos that’s being removed and installed when you’re there, you get an exposure.

And those type of people who didn’t work hands-on with the product, they were frequently exposed, and it frequently developed cancers and other asbestos diseases as a result of that exposure.

Certainly, people who may have visited the plant on more than one or two off occasions, even they’re not doing anything, they were exposed. And the differences in how plants treated asbestos back then versus how they treat it today are profound.

And so, a lot of people would come in and out of those facilities. I mean just people delivering products. I mean, a plant like that has trucks and deliveries every day. And lots of times people who were just merely delivering products we’re getting exposed to asbestos when they came into the plant.

And unfortunately, we’ve seen a number of people whose spouse or parent worked in the plant. The spouse or parent was heavily exposed. The asbestos got on their clothing, they took the clothing home unknowingly, it got into their home and their child or their spouse years later developed mesothelioma. And their only possible exposure, based on their history, was from their parent or their spouses, the asbestos that they brought home on their clothing.

So the bottom line is the people that performed any work in that plant under any appreciable period of time, and by appreciable I mean more than a day or two, they were exposed and they were at risk of developing disease. And unfortunately, we’ve seen a number of people who did in fact develop disease after either working in the plant or their loved one worked in the plant.

Did Office Workers Get Exposed to Asbestos?

John: Right? And like you said, even people who worked in the offices there at the plant, they wouldn’t just stay in the office all the time. They’d be taking trips down to the floor of the manufacturing plant where all the machines are and things like that. You wouldn’t work in a place like that and never come into contact with those places, or come into contact with some of the workers who are down there, like you said, the foreman or the supervisor or something like that. So yeah, almost anybody who worked there would’ve had at least some exposure.

Paul: I mean, virtually impossible. I mean, they probably had cleaning people who cleaned the offices and those areas. And what we’ve heard from a lot of people is, and this is just a fact, it’s impossible to remove the asbestos. And so it’s just there.

So even when they’re not working directly with asbestos products, I mean if somebody comes through and used compressed air on their workstation at the conclusion of a day, and there is asbestos in the area, they’re just swirling the asbestos about it just moves from space to space.

And so yeah, people that worked in the office, I mean if they walk through the plant 15 minutes a day for 10 years, they’re getting one massive exposure over the course of that period of time.

Do they have the same risk as the people that worked eight hours a day in it for 10 years? No, they don’t. But they had a very substantial risk. And the process, the disease process, mesothelioma, there is no safe exposure. Science has not identified any threshold level for which disease couldn’t be caused.

And so even a few hour exposure, even a day of exposure has been known to cause somebody to suffer from mesothelioma. So hundreds, if not thousands of people that worked in that plan over the last 60 years, they’re at risk. And unfortunately, we’ve seen some people who’ve suffered the consequences of that risk.

What Should Someone Exposed to Asbestos Do Next?

John: So, if somebody did work at Harvey Aluminum and now they have mesothelioma, what should they do next?

Paul: So, mesothelioma is a terminal disease. A lot of progress has been made over the years in prolonging people’s lives and increasing the quality of their life. But unfortunately, the stark reality is that most people will pass away from it within a couple of years of the diagnosis and some a lot sooner. A lot of the people that were exposed the heaviest, a lot of my clients, and they were exposed in the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s a long time ago.

And so, you’ve got two things that you have to worry about, and you have to worry about your medical care and figuring out the best path for you medically as to how you’re going to treat this cancer.

There are surgeries that are available, there’s chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy. Some people don’t choose any of those things depending on where you are in the country, particularly in Kentucky, we have a lot of fantastic doctors and specialists in Kentucky, but mesothelioma is a pretty rare disease.

And so, some people travel outside of Kentucky for different types of options. And so when you’re diagnosed with this disease, figuring out the best medical path for you and your family obviously is anybody’s biggest concern.

But right alongside that, you have to consider your legal options. And that’s where we come in. You need to speak with an attorney, speak with an attorney that does mesothelioma cases. This is a very specialized area of the law. Not a lot of lawyers do what we do. History matters.

This particular plant, like many plants in Kentucky, we’ve represented multiple people that worked in the plant over a period of time. And so it’s important to hire somebody that knows what they’re doing, both from the type of case, but also has experience with a particular location that you’re at.

Memories don’t get better. Evidence typically doesn’t get better over the passage of time. You want to do everything you can do to give yourself the best chance possible to be successful. I’ll be perfectly blunt with everybody. The best evidence I’m ever going to have as a lawyer is my client’s testimony.

And if my client can give a deposition, hopefully can be at trial. But if my client can give a deposition and tell me, the judge, the jury, defense counsel, how they were exposed to asbestos in a particular plant like Harvey Aluminum, that is going to go a long way in assisting us help you and your family.

If somebody becomes too ill or they pass away before we’re able to do that, it’s not impossible. In fact, it’s very possible that we can develop the evidence, but it is a lot harder because nobody else experienced what you experienced. You’re the only one and you’re the only one that can really give the full story. Your coworkers can give a decent account and they can certainly provide enough information that may assist in being successful. Sometimes though, that’s not possible, sometimes there are no coworkers. They’ve passed away too. They’re gone for whatever reason.

So unfortunately, while you have this unfortunate medical situation that you’re dealing with, it’s important to go ahead and figure out all of your legal options and try to hit the ground running on that so that while you’re dealing with your medical lawyers like us or whomever you feel comfortable with, can investigate, get the lawsuit filed and hopefully everything lines up so that when you have your medical plan figured out that we have the legal plan figured out, and we can then do everything in a way that makes sense for you and your family and is not invasive. It gives you the best chance possible.

Waiting almost never works. And if somebody contacts me in 11 months and we have a one-year statute of limitations, the good news is I can probably get something filed. But if you call the wrong person and that person can’t get to me until 13 months, well then the statute of limitations may be gone and you’ve lost your ability to pursue a case.

So sometimes it takes a little bit of investigation to figure it out. Not everything’s easy. So time is of the essence not wasting time. And I hate to use the word waste because once you get to that point, all time is precious.

But for what we do and for what we can do for you, the sooner that you can let us start working for you, we believe the better the outcome’s going to be for you and your family.

What is the Statute of Limitations for Mesothelioma Cases?

John: Talk a little bit more about that one-year statute of limitations and what that means and how that’s calculated, and also who is it in a mesothelioma case that you’re actually suing?

Paul: Sure. So in Kentucky where I’m at, we have a one-year statute of limitations. It’s really one year from the date that you know or should know you have an injury and what the cause of that injury is. And that’s not always a year from your diagnosis. Sometimes it could be a little bit longer than that.

However, if you file that case within one year of your diagnosis, then you’re good, there’s no chance that a court could dismiss your case.

If you file it after the year and claim, well, I really didn’t know what caused my injury or I didn’t know for sure that it was asbestos related, then you’re really at peril of your case being dismissed.

So, we will always file your case well within the year, we would try to file your case very quickly within a month or two if you come into us, if not sooner. But certainly the rule of thumb is get that lawsuit filed within a year from the diagnosis, and you have absolutely no problem.

Most of our judges would certainly like to give you the benefit of the doubt and try to maintain your lawsuit, but the law is very harsh in that regard, and they don’t have much discretion. So even if they want to maintain your case, if they think that you filed it late and that you should have known and filed it earlier, they don’t have any discretion and they’ve got to dismiss your claim.

John: Right. They can’t just start making exceptions for people and then all breaks loose and everybody starts filing their cases late.

Paul: Absolutely. And the law has established some clear delineable exceptions that the court can follow, but that’s not that. Yeah, it’s just rolling the dice at that point, hoping for the best.

But as we said, we don’t want to get anywhere close to that because we want to hit the ground running and give you the very best chance of being successful and waiting the 10, 11 months after the diagnosis occurred. That’s probably not going to be the best recipe for success.

Not that it’s not impossible, it just is harder. And then to answer your question about who could be sued, it depends on who you are. It depends on whether you were a direct employee of Harvey Aluminum or the company that owns it. Now, if you’re a direct employee, you can’t sue the employer. We have workers’ compensation protection under Kentucky Law, and that’s true for most states.

And so typically speaking, we would not be able to sue your employer. But, there’s manufacturers of products, there are distributors of products, there are contractors that installed some of the products that are all still out there. Everything’s a little unique depending on the timeframe that you work there and the individual facts of your case.

Now, if you happen to be a contractor or an employee of the contractor that worked at the plant, you very well may be able to sue the plant owner directly. And so that’s a possibility. And sometimes we’ve seen cases where the victim person with mesothelioma was the child of an employee of the company. And under those circumstances you can sue that company because the child didn’t work there. So they don’t get any sort of protections.

So everything’s kind of dependent on the particular circumstances of your facts, but there’s generally speaking, a pretty wide cast of defendants that can be pursued or in some instances a narrow set, but a very culpable set of defendants that can be held accountable for causing your disease.

And lots of times in a plant like this, we already know who to go after, but you may tell us something that increases or decreases who we can sue.

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

Paul: Thank you, John.

Get Legal Help for Asbestos Exposure

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