Many former railroad workers – including conductors, engineers, switchmen, track maintenance workers and more – are diagnosed with serious cancers after their working days are over. These include mesothelioma, lung cancer, bladder cancer, brain cancer and colon cancer.
We talk to many families loved who wonder, was the cancer caused by being around equipment that had asbestos in it? Many of these family members really had no idea what their loved one did on the job; few of them were ever around the railroad yard or office.
That is why experienced mesothelioma railroad cancer lawyers like us often are investigators for railroad workers and their families. Our job is to dig deep into railroad company records, often decades old, to determine which asbestos-tainted railroad equipment that worker may have been exposed to. Was it the engines themselves? The caboose? The roundhouse? Or was it asbestos-lined brake parts? Was it something else?
It could have been many or all of those things, depending upon the mesothelioma cancer claim. After all, most railroads, including CSX, Norfolk Southern, Conrail and others, used asbestos for decades to heat insulate their products and equipment because of the outstanding insulating quality of most forms of the toxic substance.
As experienced railroad mesothelioma lawyers, we know that the terrible health effects of long term asbestos exposure were known by some railroads as early as 1930. Yet, they continued to expose their workers to the deadly fibers, which can cause this horrible, aggressive and virtually untreatable cancer of the organ linings in the body.
That is why it is incredibly important for former railroad workers and their families to consult with an experienced FELA lawyer if they or loved ones may have been exposed to asbestos in their career. If it can be proven in civil court that you or your loved one was exposed on the railroad job to asbestos which substantially led to his or her asbestos cancer, you can be entitled to a very large financial settlement. ‘
These cases can be very tough to prove; railroads have huge financial resources and defense attorneys who try to argue often that the railroad had no asbestos in its products. We have seen railroads try that trick many times, and we usually are able to find internal railroad documents that state otherwise.