April 18, 2006

About 50 former and current employees of the Illinois Central Railroad Co. in Memphis, Tenn. have filed a series of lawsuits seeking up to $750,000 for asbestos exposure in the workplace.

According to plaintiff attorney Christopher Gilreath, the railroad employees held different jobs within the company and worked in different areas of the yards, thus leading to various injuries. Some of the worst cases include mesothelioma, a lung cancer that has been connected to asbestos exposure.

Because the extent of asbestos exposure and injuries varies between everyone involved, the litigation is not filed as a class action lawsuit. The legal team working on the case is currently investigating medical records of the plaintiffs.

The next step for us is researching medical histories. Were going to be requesting some employment files from the railroad company, documenting where each of these people worked in the yards, Gilreath said.

And depending on what their job was, they would have been exposed to different quantities of asbestos, he said. It was in a lot of things: the brake shoes that the railroads use to brake and slow the trains down, and it was in the buildings.

According to Gilreath, there are tens of thousands of asbestos lawsuits pending across the nation. A 2003 report by the Christian Science Monitor revealed that over $54 billion have already been awarded in asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits.

However, the complications of asbestos claims arise from state laws, which allow a specific window of time to file a lawsuit. In most cases, asbestos-related injury may not show up for many years after the exposure.

But Gilreath said asbestos does begin to cause major damage from the moment of exposure. He explains that small asbestos fibers come loose from material and are inhaled into the lungs and dont go away.

For people who are exposed to it on a regular basis, it builds up, and its almost like having a little piece of glass in your lungs. And it builds up enough to where your body starts trying to reject it, and it can turn into cancer.

Contact us for more information on asbestos claims.

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