After retiring from a long blue-collar career, our client and his wife got the chilling news that he had mesothelioma. This was around Father’s Day of 2014. When our client’s doctors told him the only cause of mesothelioma was exposure to asbestos, he was left wondering how that could have happened. The two of them had each other and a family to think about, so they decided to fight the disease and for their right be compensated for damages.
When our client and his wife first met with attorneys from SWMW Law several weeks after his diagnosis, they told us that they had figured out that if he passed away from his mesothelioma and she kept working, she’d need only $250,000 to make ends meet.
SWMW lawyers then interviewed them and learned that he began working in the early 1970s as an electrician and maintenance mechanic at several steel mills. Then for over a decade in the 1980s and 1990s, he worked as a vehicle and heavy equipment mechanic for a regional road construction contractor. It was clear to SWMW attorneys that our client had experienced significant occupational exposure to asbestos in these jobs. Beyond that, our client was an avid amateur-racing enthusiast and had been exposed to asbestos while performing hundreds of brake and clutch jobs on his and his friends’ cars in the 1960s and 1970s. After working to piece together the numerous asbestos exposures he experienced in his career and personal life, he and his wife understood that there were many companies that had contributed to cause our client’s mesothelioma.
In September and October 2014, our client worked with SWMW Law to give several days of deposition testimony, sacrificing precious remaining time with his family to make sure that Janet, his kids, and generations of his family to come would benefit from his completely unnecessary asbestos-related death. Despite wanting to make it to one last Christmas in 2014 for his family, our client unfortunately lost his fight and his family lost their husband, father, and hero just before Thanksgiving, a mere five months after being diagnosed.
Even though the family told us they needed only $250,000 for her to get by on her own, we knew they were entitled to more. We fought hard for our client and his family, and to date, the companies responsible have been made to pay settlements to the family for over $2.5 million, with total settlements expected to reach approximately $3 million.