According to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, lawyers for the U.S. government told an appellate court panel in Seattle earlier this week that unless several lower-court decisions are overturned, it will be” impossible to properly prosecute W.R. Grace & Co. on charges of concealing for years the dangers of asbestos from a vermiculite mine near Libby, Montana.”

Last year, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy chose to ban the government’s use of a number of essential documents as well as testimony from several expert witnesses in the case against the company and seven of its top executives.
On Monday, federal lawyers asked the three senior judges of the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn Molloy’s rulings. The government stressed that since the mid-1970s, Grace and its managers “knew, yet deliberately concealed, the devastating health effect that would result from exposure to asbestos.”
Grace mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in the small town of Libby for more than 30 years. To date, thousands in the town have been sickened and hundreds have already died from asbestos-related diseases, including the cancer mesothelioma. The material was also shipped to more than 200 processing centers throughout the United States and was made into lawn and garden products and insulation. Some estimate as many as 15 million to 35 million homes and businesses contain this asbestos-contaminated insulation.

Many Libby residents and other advocates for asbestos victims were angered because Molloy “accepted Grace’s contention that the government has misidentified the specific type of asbestos in its vermiculite.” The ore contained tremolite, which is regulated by the EPA, but also winchite and richterite, which are considered hazardous under the Clean Air Act.

“It doesn’t matter what they call it. Cemeteries and hospitals throughout the Northwest are filled with people fallen by the asbestos from Grace’s vermiculite,” said Dr. Brad Black, medical director for Libby’s Center for Asbestos Related Disease. “The number of deaths from exposure to whatever is in that ore that I continue to hear about from around the country every week just stuns me, and damn it, I’ve been doing this for years.”

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