Montana had duty at mine site

HELENA – State officials had a responsibility to warn miners about decades of dangerous health conditions at a Libby vermiculite mine, but a trial is needed to determine if government officials failed to fulfill that duty, a divided Montana Supreme Court said Tuesday.

The 4-3 decision said the government’s immunity from being sued was removed by the 1972 Montana Constitution and cannot afford protection from the claims of the miners suffering from years of exposure to asbestos in the mine, which W.R. Grace & Co., closed in 1990.

The ruling was a blow to the state’s defense against the claims of nine people who either worked at the mine or were married to people who did.

But the court did not determine whether the state did anything wrong or whether the government must pay any damages.

Still, the court did question the lack of action by the state in warning mine workers about the dangers associated with the mining of vermiculite after conducting four inspections between 1956 and 1964.

The majority said the state’s argument that it could not have foreseen the mine operators’ failure to protect workers “rings hollow.” The inspections showed that was not being done, the court said.

Nine Libby residents appealed a district judge’s ruling in 2001 that threw out their lawsuit against the state for failing to warn them about the dangers posed by Grace’s vermiculite mine.

The vermiculite ore contained harmful levels of tremolite asbestos and is blamed for hundreds of illnesses and at least 200 deaths. The Environmental Protection Agency has been cleaning up the mine site and other contaminated areas in the town since 1999. Libby was declared a Superfund site in 2002.

The plaintiffs contend that the state inspector who visited the mine in the 1950s and 1960s reported on the toxicity of the vermiculite dust and concluded that the workers’ exposure to it would eventually cause pulmonary disease. The plaintiffs argued that the information was never passed on to workers.