Owens-Corning Glass Worker Files Asbestos Suit

December 19, 2006 - James Anderson, a former Owens Illinois-Glass mold maker, has filed suit in a Clair County, IL court against the company and 12 additional defendants, claiming that his lung cancer resulted from exposure to asbestos while on-the-job.

Anderson, who was diagnosed with the disease in early June 2006, was employed at the Alton plant from 1954 to 1993.  Among the other defendants named in the case are Goodyear, A.W. Chesterton, John Crane, and Strange & Coleman, Inc.

As is typical in most asbestos suits, Anderson claims 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 that people working with and around asbestos would inhale, ingest or otherwise absorb great amounts of asbestos.”

He also claims that asbestos was used when other safer substitutes were available and that the companies “failed to conduct tests on the asbestos-containing products, manufactured, sold or delivered by the defendants to determine the hazards to which workers might be exposed.”

The suit also alleges that they “failed to provide adequate warning to people working with and around the products of the dangers of inhaling, ingesting or otherwise absorbed fibers in them and failed to provide adequate instruction concerning the safe methods of working with and around asbestos products.”

According to the Madison County Record, Anderson seeks at least $250,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive and exemplary damages in excess of $100,000.