Mesothelioma at International Harvester in Louisville, KY (Podcast)

In this episode, John Maher speaks with Paul Kelley, partner at Satterley & Kelley, about asbestos exposure at the International Harvester plant in Louisville, Kentucky. Paul explains the plant’s history, its use of asbestos in equipment like furnaces, kilns, and steam lines, and how various workers were exposed to the harmful material. He discusses the legal options available for individuals who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, including direct employees, contractors, and family members exposed through secondhand contact. Paul emphasizes the importance of moving quickly to file a lawsuit due to Kentucky’s one-year statute of limitations and the need to gather key information and testimonies from those affected.

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.

Welcome Paul.

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

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

Paul: Doing great, thanks.

What is International Harvester in Louisville, KY?

John: So, today we’re talking about International Harvester in Louisville, Kentucky. Can you tell us a little bit about International Harvester and then how that company is related to asbestos and mesothelioma cases?

Paul: Sure. So a lot of folks are probably familiar with International Harvester. They’ve been around for a long time. I think the company started in the late-1800s, early-1900s. It’s a heavy-duty truck and heavy-duty farm equipment tractors, and kind of the full gamut of farming equipment that people can use. And that’s what they have historically manufactured, and that’s historically what they’ve manufactured in Louisville, Kentucky.

Back in the 1940s, the facility that housed International Harvester was actually built as a defense manufacturing plant kind of at the tail end of World War II. And it was owned and operated by the government for a few years. And then in 1949, International Harvester bought the facility and started running it and started manufacturing predominantly farm equipment. And that’s what it manufactured for roughly 50 years until the plant closed down the late ’90s and the early 2000s.

Its relationship to asbestos and to mesothelioma and other diseases is that given the timeframe that International Harvester was constructed and given the period of time that it operated, quite frankly, it was absolutely infested and contaminated with asbestos-containing products. It was all over the facility. It was a giant plant. It had what we call a foundry, and it also had a forge shop.

And foundries are places where basically metal is created by heating liquid materials, and then ultimately it forms into a metal. And then the forge shop is where some additional heating takes place in order to mold and bend those metal pieces into ultimately what becomes component parts for the tractors and farming equipment that they manufactured.

And so there was lots of asbestos that was utilized during the process. There were furnaces and kilns in the facility, ovens that were utilized for all these various heating processes. All of those things contained asbestos. There were miles and miles and miles of steam lines that ran through the plant. The steam lines predominantly carried steam that operated and powered some of the equipment that we’re talking about, the furnaces and the ovens and the kilns, but also operated boilers that were in the facility for the purposes of heating the plant.

And so all these steam lines carried steam that was hundreds if not into the thousands of degrees in temperature. And all of those things were wrapped with asbestos insulation. And so over the years, we have discovered through unfortunately representing a lot of people that worked in that facility, either as a direct employee of International Harvester or as a contractor that worked at the facility, we’ve learned about the various types of asbestos products.

And finally, in about 2001, 2002, somewhere thereabouts, they have actually torn the facility down. People that are familiar with Louisville knows International Harvester was located right around where our airport sits now. And so the airport eventually got control of that property. There were some other businesses that were operated in there in the late ’90s, but now the airport has it. So they had to tear that property down.

When they did, a company came in and conducted an asbestos survey. And just in 2001, I mean, Lord knows what had been in there prior to that point.

John: Sure.

Paul: But just in 2001, before they tore it down, they had to remove asbestos floor tile, pipe insulation, boiler insulation, roofing materials, as well as something called transite siding. Transite was kind of an asbestos cement product, and lots of times it was used as kind of the wall units for various buildings within the facility. So that’s just what was there in 2001. And then prior to that, it was all the insulation that was in the boilers, the furnaces, the kilns, and that would be fire brick, thermal insulation, refractory material.

So, there was a lot there. And it was there really from the time that it was built in about 1946 until they tore the whole plant down in the early 2000s.

Why did International Harvester Have So Much Asbestos?

John: So, International Harvester maybe wouldn’t have had quite as much. They probably would’ve still had asbestos in the plant, but maybe not as much if they hadn’t actually been manufacturing the raw metals and forming the pieces for the tractors right there within the plant. That’s really part of the problem at least, was that they had this forge, like you said, set up and they were dealing with molten metal and furnaces that really required a lot of asbestos, right?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. If they were just assembling these machines from component parts that were supplied, a lot of the asbestos that was utilized there would not have been necessary. So you’re absolutely right. And again, they pretty much utilized that process for 40, 50 years. And asbestos might not have been in all of that equipment right up to the ’90s. But certainly as we know in 2001, 2002, a lot of it was still there. And certainly, from the ’40s, ’50s into the ’90s, there were definitely people that were exposed in that plant on a fairly regular basis.

What Types of Employees Were Exposed to Asbestos?

John: Who were some of those employees? What types of employees might’ve been exposed to the asbestos that was there in the plant?

Paul: So, of course, the obvious folks are the ones that constructed the plant way back in 1946. All that pipe insulation had to go in. All of the insulation went into the equipment. And so the insulators that insulated it, the millwrights who probably set some of the equipment. Those folks certainly were exposed.

And then, as you move forward into the operation of the plant, that’s where it got really devastating because what we’ve seen over the years are just a wide variety of people and people that you wouldn’t, or at least people outside of what I do, you might not ordinarily expect that they’d be exposed. So for example, a few years ago I had a crane operator. I mean, the guy just operated a crane, and he was heavily exposed from driving and operating the crane in the plant, and he’d be around maintenance people who had to remove the insulation for various purposes.

Pipes fail. There are problems that occur. They need to be troubleshooted. And every time that occurred, somebody would’ve to get up there and remove the insulation from the piping, and they would expose themselves. They would expose all of the people that are working in the area.

And I’m not being critical of those people because they didn’t know. But the bottom line is that if you were working in assembly, if you were working in the Forge shop, if you were working in the foundry and there had to be work that was being performed on the piping or any of this equipment, it wasn’t just the people that were directly doing the work that were exposed, it was really everybody that was working in the area.

So, who would be working on those things? Well, pipe fitters would work on the pipes in addition to the maintenance mechanics. Boilermakers would work on the boilers. Lots of times millwrights would work with the furnaces and the kilns. Sometimes boilermakers would do those. Sometimes electricians had to work on those pieces of machinery because they all had electrical components to them as well. Of course, insulators worked on all those pieces of equipment at various times, whether it was the original insulation or when they had something called overhauls.

So, the pipe insulation theoretically wouldn’t have to be removed for many, many years if there wasn’t a problem, if there wasn’t a pipe failure or some reason to work on it. But the furnaces in the ovens and the kilns and the boilers, that insulation was not meant to last for 20 years. It was subjected to extremely high temperatures, extremely high heat, lots of wear and tear. So every so often, every three or four years, every plant’s different, but let’s say within five years, all the fire brick, all the insulation, all the refractive material, all of that would have to be removed. They get into the piece of equipment. These are huge furnaces. These are huge boilers. I mean, multiple people can stand inside of these things.

And so, they would basically tear them down from top to bottom. And they wouldn’t just work on the insulation, but anything that needed to be dealt with. And there was piping in these machines and tubes that were in these machines, again, electrical components. So they tear all those down. And so the boiler makers or the millwrights or maintenance mechanics, people in those kinds of trades would get in and do that kind of work. But again, even if you weren’t one of the trades who was working directly doing that, you’d still have a high likelihood of exposure if you were working on some other aspect of the furnace.

So, for example, I’ll have clients who their job is to replace the doors. The doors would fail. And so as a part of these overhauls, they get in and they take the doors off. Well, while they’re doing that, there are other trades that are right inside the furnaces that are tearing out all the bad stuff. And so the people working on the doors would still get exposure. So those kinds of folks.

You’d get outside contractors, and there were always all kinds of outside contractors that worked in a plant like International Harvester. Sometimes they had their own skilled trades. Sometimes it was easier to get skilled trade from the labor unions or independent contractors. So those folks would come in.

But quite frankly, really anybody that could have spent any significant time in the plant during all these various activities would be exposed because if you are an engineer, if you’re a supervisor, if you are somebody that comes in from “corporate” on occasion, when they’re doing all of that work, unless you somehow manage to go into a bubble somewhere and not have to walk through the plant and be exposed to it, there was a pretty significant chance that you could get exposure. Maybe those type of people wouldn’t get the same level that the direct workers would or the people that worked in the plant, day in and day out. But we’ve talked about this before.

The insidious part about asbestos is science doesn’t know exactly how much of it takes to cause mesothelioma in particular, but they know that it’s a relatively scant amount. And historically, there’ve been famous scientists who’ve said, “Asbestos really doesn’t care who you are, what your job title is and what you wear to work. Asbestos just cares if you have lungs and a way to breathe and a way for it to get to your lungs.”

And so that’s the problem with this cancer. And what we’ve seen is that if you walk through the plant one day, you probably were okay. If you spent 25 years in that plant, day in and day out, breathing the asbestos that quite frankly was being stirred up one way or the other every day, you were put at significant risk of contracting disease. And then there are people that are in between that didn’t just walk through one day and didn’t just, or didn’t spend all day every day, but they received a significant exposure.

And we know that in the late-1970s there was what we call industrial hygiene sampling air monitoring, whatever you want to call it. And they took samples at various parts of the plant and they found levels that were known to be very high at the time. They were probably within what we called permissible exposure limits in the 1970s, at least in some respects. But by today’s standard, I mean it’s devastating levels.

And even back then, they knew that those levels were not good. It’s just what OSHA and EPA said was an okay limit for the purposes of what they were doing in those plants. And that’s just one day. That’s just one day that somebody comes in and takes some air measurements and does some sampling. And that one day showed levels that were 200 times what your levels are today. So that’s not a good thing.

I know that’s a long-winded answer of how and who’s exposed, but the answer to the question is virtually everybody that worked in that plant on any extended period of time, and by extended, I mean a few weeks or more over the history of the plant, they got exposed. And we’ve seen people, we’ve seen people in both kind of gamuts: the everyday worker contract this terrible disease, and we’ve seen people that spent an appreciable amount of time, but far less than your typical worker.

Mesothelioma Can Impact Anyone with Any Level of Exposure

John: And mesothelioma is very indiscriminate. I mean, you could have somebody who just gets exposed one time or a couple of times and then they end up with mesothelioma, and you could have somebody who worked directly with it for 25 years and they don’t get the disease. So you just really kind of never know.

Paul: Yeah, and I think it’s very similar to cigarette smoking. I think people can get used to that. And cigarette smoking is the biggest cause of lung cancer and some other cancers. And everybody knows the person that smoked every day for 50 years and somehow didn’t get lung cancer, and then the person that smoked for five years quit for 25 and then somehow ended up getting it.

So, there’s always what we kind of call an individual susceptibility and genetics and other things certainly play a factor in the development of mesothelioma following an asbestos exposure.

But what we know is it’s the single biggest cause of mesothelioma. We know that no one credibly believes that there’s any safe level of exposure to asbestos. And we know that people have had relatively minor exposures have developed this disease. And that’s why, quite frankly, I still am doing what I do after 20 some odd of doing this because companies just failed miserably to protect people from exposure to this terrible product, even though there was a lot of knowledge there that certainly they had that people like my clients didn’t have, that this exposure was likely going to result in significant harm to a whole bunch of people.

What Should You Do If You Worked at International Harvester And Have Been Diagnosed with Mesothelioma?

John: So, if you worked at International Harvester and now you have mesothelioma, or maybe a family member of yours worked at International Harvester and they potentially brought it home and you were exposed because of that, what should you do next?

Paul: That’s a good point. So there’s two different kind of tracks here. You’ve got people who were direct employees of International Harvester. You’ve got people who were contractors that worked on their property for whatever reason. And then you’ve got people in that situation who were family members of one of those two other groups. And we’ve seen a lot of cases from both Harvester, as well as other types of facilities that didn’t work in a plant, and they washed the clothing, handle the clothing of their spouse or parent, and got dust exposure and ended up contracting the disease. So there’s multiple different ways.

Depending on who you are and how you were exposed and which of those boxes you fit in is going to have a big impact on what you can do. If you’re a direct employee of International Harvester, one thing that’s off the table is filing a suit directly against International. Kentucky like most states has a workers’ compensation system that prevents and precludes you from filing a direct, what we call a tort claim, a lawsuit against your employer.

So, in that instance, what we do is we look for manufacturers of products, contractors that put products in the plant and try to develop and maintain a case in that regard.

There’s also something called a bankruptcy claim process that can be pursued. A lot of your historical manufacturers of asbestos containing products have gone into bankruptcy over the years, and they’ve established trusts with which you can file claims. So there’s definitely a path for compensation for you and your family in that regard. But it is a little bit harder because in most instances, not only can you not file the lawsuit against International Harvester, but for legal reasons, you can’t even file a workers’ compensation claim against it anymore either.

Now, if you’re a contractor, more than likely you can still file a case directly against International Harvester, plus all those other entities we talked about, and that might increase the pool of compensation available to you in that regard. And that’s certainly a good thing.

Now, the people who were exposed in the home from the clothing of their loved ones, everything’s on the table. They can pursue a case against Harvester. They can pursue a case against contractors. They can pursue a case against manufacturers, distributors, I mean anybody that’s still out there and file the bankruptcy claims as well. So they’ve all got an ability to do that.

The biggest issue I think is when people get diagnosed with this cancer, it’s a huge shock, John. I mean, it’s a fatal disease. I mean, I’ve represented close to a hundred people in my career, 20 some odd years, that have had mesothelioma. I can only think of one person that’s lived more than three years, four years. It’s not good. And so it’s a big shock when people get this diagnosis and they’re still trying to figure out, ‘Well, how in the world was I exposed,” because they didn’t really know.

And then they get this terrible news that more than likely this is a fatal disease, and the only real treatment available to them is palliative care, life prolonging, but not curative. So I think it’s critically important for people and their families to make sure that they understand all of the medical options available to them, because that’s obviously the most important.

I mean, what I do, I think ultimately is important to people, but certainly the medical care treatment, the path that you choose to take, it’s a big decision and it’s one that should not be taken lightly, and it’s one that should be taken with all of the best information that you can possibly get.

We sit in a great place in Kentucky, Louisville in particular, but Lexington, Northern Kentucky. There’s certainly a lot of great doctors out there. And there’s a lot of great doctors that can treat this cancer in a lot of traditional ways, chemotherapy, radiation, that sort of thing. But there are surgeries people can receive, and those are typically highly specialized, and they’re not offered in most places. So a lot of our clients go to Massachusetts, New York, Houston, Chicago, a variety of places in order to get treated.

So, it’s critically important that people work with their doctors and their families to determine the best medical path for them. But the problem is while that’s an overwhelming process, time doesn’t stand still for any lawsuit that can be filed. And so it’s really important to seek legal advice as fast as you can to determine what legal rights you have, whether you have a case, who that case is against, where that case can be filed because things don’t get better over the course of time. People’s memories fade. Your health could deteriorate. Defendants that we plan on suing, I mean just by virtue of bad luck, they might disregard or discard documents and those sort of things.

So, I think it’s critical to conduct the research, figure out what lawyers are best for you. We recognize that there’s a lot of options, but certainly if your exposure was in Kentucky, we think we’re a good option. We think we’re a good option because most of the places that people were exposed, we know about. And we’ve got significant evidence already demonstrating the existence of asbestos of these plants. We have a lot of evidence already concerning the knowledge of the defendants. And that’s important because the last thing that you really want is to have to waste any time at all trying to figure stuff out.

There’s always things to figure out. I’ve never gotten a call from somebody where everything’s in a nice neat little package and we’re ready to go. But frequently, and particularly if we’re talking about this facility, we know what to do right out of the box. And there will be other exposures to pursue and other questions that have to be asked. But I think it’s important to find somebody that really handles asbestos cases, handles asbestos cases in the place that your case is going to be filed, is familiar with the locations that you worked at to the extent that anybody could be. There’s always some places that people aren’t familiar with, but this one we’re familiar with.

And find somebody you’re comfortable with, because outside your doctors and your medical care, there’s nothing more important than feeling comfortable with your lawyer because you’re going to have a relationship with that person for two or three years.

Why Move Quickly on a Mesothelioma Case?

John: Yeah. And it sounds like there’s a lot of reasons for moving quickly on a case like this. Is the statute of limitations also one of those reasons? And what’s the statute of limitations in a case like this in Kentucky?

Paul: Yeah. That’s a great question. In Kentucky, it’s quite frankly, it’s terrible. We only have one year from the date that we know or should know that there’s an injury and what the cause of that injury is to file a lawsuit. And those dates can theoretically be different.

What we try to do is get a case filed well within the year of date of diagnosis. If you file the case within a year of your diagnosis of mesothelioma, there’s no risk whatsoever that a court would have to throw the case out for failing to file it on time.

Statute of limitations in Kentucky and a lot of states, it’s really harsh. Our judges don’t have much discretion in allowing a case to continue if they don’t think that it was filed within that year. They may want to, but they can’t do it.

So, obviously we want to talk to you as quickly as you feel comfortable after you’ve received the diagnosis. And we want to do that for a bunch of reasons. And the statute of limitations is a big one because if you wait eight months or don’t get to me for eight months, I’ve got some work to do before we can get the case filed, even if we’re very familiar with the location like International Harvester, and we never get anywhere close. I mean, if somebody came to me two weeks after their diagnosis, more than likely we’d have the lawsuit filed month or two. But it’s really important from that standpoint.

And it’s also important because again, unfortunately the prognosis cannot be very good. And the longer it takes to get a case filed, the longer it takes to get other things done.

One of the things that I really want to push for when I file a case for somebody who’s still alive is we want to get their deposition in. We want for them to be able to tell the defendants, the judge, the jury, what’s happened to them. Not just what their exposures were, but what happened to them, their disease, when they were diagnosed, how that’s made them feel physically and emotionally, the medical treatment they’ve gone through. We want them to tell everybody about their family and what they’ve enjoyed with their lives and everything that makes that person or made that person who they are.

And the best way to do that is to do it as early as possible, do it when they’re healthy and strong, and are really able to accurately convey that.

So, we want to do that as quickly as possible. So the statute of limitations is critically important, but also from a tactical and strategic reason, the most important thing for me is that you get to tell your story. It’s not that I can’t make the case without it. We can get that information from other people, but nobody knows your story better than you do. I mean, nobody does. And so we want to be able to get that story from our clients, let them explain to the world how this has impacted them. And you want to do that as quickly as possible, and you certainly don’t want to get anywhere close to that statute of limitations.

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

Paul: No problem. Thank you, John.

Information About the Law Firm of Satterley & Kelley

John: And 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.