2005-02-11
ENVIRONMENT | LAWSUITS
The winter landscape to the right may seem pretty until you realize at what it is you are looking | That's an asbsetos mining operation in Montana run by W R Grace Corporation |
The U.S. Justice Department said recently that seven current or former executives were charged on Monday with conspiring to endanger residents in Libby, Montana, and concealing the health risks from asbestos-contaminated vermiculite |
According to the indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Montana, Grace spread the asbestos throughout the community to such locations as commercial buildings and schools, including an outdoor ice skating rink, school running tracks and baseball fields |
The website Occupatioal Hazards maintain that:
The lawsuit is a good example of the kind of litigation that the Bush Administration [and others in USA Government, including Democratic Senator Chris Dodd] would like to see curtailed or eliminated, citing that damages to corporate nations would be excessive | Don't see the problem here, W R Grace is in bankruptcy proceedings as a way of avoiding paying our for past lawsuits where damages were proven | There's more to the story
PIX CREDIT: Reuters
The winter landscape to the right may seem pretty until you realize at what it is you are looking | That's an asbsetos mining operation in Montana run by W R Grace Corporation | The U.S. Justice Department said recently that seven current or former executives were charged on Monday with conspiring to endanger residents in Libby, Montana, and concealing the health risks from asbestos-contaminated vermiculite |
According to the indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Montana, Grace spread the asbestos throughout the community to such locations as commercial buildings and schools, including an outdoor ice skating rink, school running tracks and baseball fields |
The website Occupatioal Hazards maintain that:
Officials from Columbia, Md.-based W.R. Grace & Co., which operated a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont., from 1963 to 1990, were well-aware that the asbestos-tainted vermiculate products they were profiting from were endangering the lives of mine workers, customers and residents of Libby and the surrounding communities, according to an indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Montana on Feb. 7 |Grace said in a statement that it "categorically denies any criminal wrongdoing," and that it was supporting the long-term health care of the citizens of Libby |
Approximately 1,200 residents in the Libby area -- 70 percent of whom did not work at the Libby Mine -- have asbestos-related health abnormalities, according to the indictment |
The lawsuit is a good example of the kind of litigation that the Bush Administration [and others in USA Government, including Democratic Senator Chris Dodd] would like to see curtailed or eliminated, citing that damages to corporate nations would be excessive | Don't see the problem here, W R Grace is in bankruptcy proceedings as a way of avoiding paying our for past lawsuits where damages were proven | There's more to the story
Related Sites: Occupational Hazards Report on the Indictment | The EPA's website detailing problems at WR Grace's Acton Plant in Concord, Massachusetts | Grace Corporation spin meisters made their own website to defend themselves in the case of Woburn, Massachusetts; looks like some do-gooder environmental law site doesn't it? It's not |
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