The book "The Air That Kills" (How the Asbestos Poisoning of Libby, Montana, Uncovered a National Scandal) is an interesting though sad story. I recommend you read it. Here is an intriguing excerpt from the book:
Morning for les skramstad are a mixed blessing.
The old cowboy makes his way to the kitchen. He’s usually a bit wobbly, but he braces himself against the counter and gets the coffee going if Norita didn’t beat him to the pot.
Just making it to the table and I'm out of air,” he laments.
Les sits down at the pine table and rests his head in his hand while he tries to catch his breath. He pours medicine into a cigar-boxed-sized machine sitting on the table. The label on the medicine box states: Albuterol – A great advancement in bronchodilator therapy.
All i know is that it makes breathing easier. That's what you worry about with asbestosis-breathing.”
Medicated air flows from the plastic tube into his mouth. He takes breaths as deep as he can manage, trying to pull air into the asbestos-scarred tissue. Five, six minutes he sucks it in. His color improves. His eyes sparkle a bit. He’s breathing easier. He makes it through the day in fits and starts. The slightest activity leaves him breathless again, and wheezing.
He keeps at it. We won’t give up.” Norita said.” He’ll go outside and work on the tractor for a few minutes, then sit down, catch his breath. And go back to the tractor and work another couple of minutes. Oxygen would help, but he’ll never do it. To him it would be like giving up.
Each day that les wakes up is another victory, each night another living hell.
It’s hard to sleep when your lungs aren’t pliable enough to breath in the air you need to live. He tosses and turns. Norita gets even less sleep worrying about him. When he finally lies still. She lies there listening to hear that he’s still breathing. His breaths are so shallow that she can barely see his chest rise, but she never mentions it.
Les is adamant about the oxygen.
Dragging a tank of air behind you is like admitting that you’re dying. Everyday i know who started on oxygen died a few months later, “he said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “it’s like giving in to Grace and saying “Yeah, you killed another one.”
“THIS IS A CASE about asbestosis, which is a fatal lung disease,” Jon Heberling told the jury in his opening statement on May 13, 1997. He was in the Lincoln County Courthouse in Libby, more precisely the 19th Judicial District Court for the state of Montana, and he did not mince words. “Les Skramstad was diagnosed with asbestosis in 1995. His asbestos exposure was working at Zonolite here in Libby, from 1959 to 1961. He’ll die of asbestosis.”
Heberling in his early 50s, still looked very youthful with his full head of blond hair with a few strands of gray. Gangly at 6’1”, he was soft-spoken but very effective in the courtroom. He had practiced law down the road from libby, in Kalispell, for 23 years, and he had won judgements for plaintiffs in all kinds of injury cases. But rarely had he had as much riding on the outcome of a case as he did in this trial. This was not just about les and norita. This was about all the miners and their families, and the other libby asbestos victims who were waiting for justice.
Les didn’t intend to take this case out of the hands of the jury, once they got it. He didn’t intend to settle or sign a confidentiality agreement, and he didn’t intend to back off an inch. Les skramstad isn’t an angry man by nature. Like many Montanans, he generally gives people the benefit of the doubt. Until he’s shown otherwise, he’ll think the best of folks.
But now he’d been shown otherwise. He’d been injured in a way that his doctors said would eventually kill him, and W.R. Grace had refused to take responsibility. He didn’t just have a chip on his shoulder about grace. He had the whole log. And he was determined to do everything he could to give them absolute hell, because he thought that’s what they deserved. And Les Skramstad does believe in people getting just what they deserved.
“on the issue of whether W>R> Grace failed to provide Lester Skramstad with a reasonably safe place to work and, if so whether the failure to provide a safe place to work was a cause of Skramstad’s injuries, we find for the plaintiff, Lester Skramstad.
“We find for the plaintiff, Lester Skramstad, in the amount of six hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. We find for the plaintiff, Norita Skramstad, in the amount of thirty-five thousand dollars.”
It was not a total Victory. The jury did not award punitive damages, and there was not enough money awarded to cover all of Les’s projected medical expenses. But it was a hugely important verdict. Grace as found liable by a jury for the first time in Libby. The damages were significant, and many Libby victims would be helped by this verdict.
What Les and Norita didn’t know that evening was that their legal ordeal was not over, and that they would never get all that the jury had found that they deserved.
adxasbestos removal.com 125 S Clark St Chicago, IL
Morning for les skramstad are a mixed blessing.
The old cowboy makes his way to the kitchen. He’s usually a bit wobbly, but he braces himself against the counter and gets the coffee going if Norita didn’t beat him to the pot.
Just making it to the table and I'm out of air,” he laments.
Les sits down at the pine table and rests his head in his hand while he tries to catch his breath. He pours medicine into a cigar-boxed-sized machine sitting on the table. The label on the medicine box states: Albuterol – A great advancement in bronchodilator therapy.
All i know is that it makes breathing easier. That's what you worry about with asbestosis-breathing.”
Medicated air flows from the plastic tube into his mouth. He takes breaths as deep as he can manage, trying to pull air into the asbestos-scarred tissue. Five, six minutes he sucks it in. His color improves. His eyes sparkle a bit. He’s breathing easier. He makes it through the day in fits and starts. The slightest activity leaves him breathless again, and wheezing.
He keeps at it. We won’t give up.” Norita said.” He’ll go outside and work on the tractor for a few minutes, then sit down, catch his breath. And go back to the tractor and work another couple of minutes. Oxygen would help, but he’ll never do it. To him it would be like giving up.
Each day that les wakes up is another victory, each night another living hell.
It’s hard to sleep when your lungs aren’t pliable enough to breath in the air you need to live. He tosses and turns. Norita gets even less sleep worrying about him. When he finally lies still. She lies there listening to hear that he’s still breathing. His breaths are so shallow that she can barely see his chest rise, but she never mentions it.
Les is adamant about the oxygen.
Dragging a tank of air behind you is like admitting that you’re dying. Everyday i know who started on oxygen died a few months later, “he said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “it’s like giving in to Grace and saying “Yeah, you killed another one.”
“THIS IS A CASE about asbestosis, which is a fatal lung disease,” Jon Heberling told the jury in his opening statement on May 13, 1997. He was in the Lincoln County Courthouse in Libby, more precisely the 19th Judicial District Court for the state of Montana, and he did not mince words. “Les Skramstad was diagnosed with asbestosis in 1995. His asbestos exposure was working at Zonolite here in Libby, from 1959 to 1961. He’ll die of asbestosis.”
Heberling in his early 50s, still looked very youthful with his full head of blond hair with a few strands of gray. Gangly at 6’1”, he was soft-spoken but very effective in the courtroom. He had practiced law down the road from libby, in Kalispell, for 23 years, and he had won judgements for plaintiffs in all kinds of injury cases. But rarely had he had as much riding on the outcome of a case as he did in this trial. This was not just about les and norita. This was about all the miners and their families, and the other libby asbestos victims who were waiting for justice.
Les didn’t intend to take this case out of the hands of the jury, once they got it. He didn’t intend to settle or sign a confidentiality agreement, and he didn’t intend to back off an inch. Les skramstad isn’t an angry man by nature. Like many Montanans, he generally gives people the benefit of the doubt. Until he’s shown otherwise, he’ll think the best of folks.
But now he’d been shown otherwise. He’d been injured in a way that his doctors said would eventually kill him, and W.R. Grace had refused to take responsibility. He didn’t just have a chip on his shoulder about grace. He had the whole log. And he was determined to do everything he could to give them absolute hell, because he thought that’s what they deserved. And Les Skramstad does believe in people getting just what they deserved.
“on the issue of whether W>R> Grace failed to provide Lester Skramstad with a reasonably safe place to work and, if so whether the failure to provide a safe place to work was a cause of Skramstad’s injuries, we find for the plaintiff, Lester Skramstad.
“We find for the plaintiff, Lester Skramstad, in the amount of six hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. We find for the plaintiff, Norita Skramstad, in the amount of thirty-five thousand dollars.”
It was not a total Victory. The jury did not award punitive damages, and there was not enough money awarded to cover all of Les’s projected medical expenses. But it was a hugely important verdict. Grace as found liable by a jury for the first time in Libby. The damages were significant, and many Libby victims would be helped by this verdict.
What Les and Norita didn’t know that evening was that their legal ordeal was not over, and that they would never get all that the jury had found that they deserved.
adxasbestos removal.com 125 S Clark St Chicago, IL
