Massachusetts Man Files Asbestos Suit in Illinois

September 8, 2006 - An article in the Madison-St Clair Record reports that a man who worked in Massachusetts and Maine for nearly three decades has filed an asbestos suit against 44 defendants in Madison County Circuit Court, claiming that exposure to asbestos – caused by negligence on the part of these defendants – has caused him to develop mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs.

Arthur Alton, who was diagnosed with the disease about 6 months ago, claims that it was wrongly caused.  In his September 1st lawsuit, attorneys for Alton claim that “the defendants failed to exercise ordinary care and caution for his safety by including asbestos in their products, even though it was completely foreseeable and should have been anticipated that people working with or around them would inhale, ingest, or otherwise absorb great amounts of asbestos.”

According to the newspaper account of the lawsuit, Alton was employed from 1963 to 1967 as a boilerman/fireman in the U.S. Navy in Illinois, Florida and Rhode Island; from 1968 to 1972 as a mechanic at two different service stations in Massachusetts; from 1972 to 1974 as a mechanic for Bedford Cities Services in Massachusetts; from 1974 to 1975 as a machinist's helper in Massachusetts; from 1976 to 1977 as a machinery mechanic at Bethlehem Shipyard in Massachusetts; from 1977 to 1983 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine and from the 1950s to the 1980s as a shade tree mechanic in Massachusetts.

The lawsuit also alleges that the defendants included asbestos in their products even though adequate substitute materials were available, that the places where Alton was employed failed to provide adequate instruction concerning the safe methods of working with and around asbestos products, and that the defendants failed to conduct tests on the asbestos-containing products manufactured, sold or delivered by the defendants in order to determine the hazards to which workers might be exposed.