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A California jury awarded the family of a deceased millwright a $3.4 million verdict after finding a Canadian company liable for exposing the worker to asbestos in the contaminated plant.

Richard Worthley Sr., a U.S. Marine and Vietnam veteran, worked as a millwright, painter and production planner at the Johns-Manville Transite plant in Waukegan, Ill., from May 1968 to 1984, when it closed. He then moved to southern California where he held various maintenance jobs until 2004, when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer related to asbestos exposure that eventually took his life.

Attorneys for Advocate Mines of Newfoundland, Canada, the defendant in the case, contended that the company had stopped supplying asbestos to Johns-Manville 13 months before Worthley began working there and denied liability. Advocate Mines supplied bulk asbestos to the Waukegan, Illinois plant from December 1963 to April 1967.

Worthley was exposed to dust from raw asbestos fiber used to make Transite asbestos-cement pipe, including fiber dust that had been resuspended from when Advocate Mines supplied asbestos to the plant. One of Worthley’s job was to clean and repair the manufacturing equipment, including the dust collection equipment, which exposed Worthley to asbestos.

“We demonstrated to the jury that it was the total dose of asbestos that Mr. Worthley was exposed to at the Johns-Manville plant, including resuspended asbestos fiber from Advocate Mines that contributed together to cause his mesothelioma and death,” James Nevin, attorney for Worthley, said in a statement.

By 1963, it was well established in medicine and science that asbestos caused asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma, Worthley’s attorneys said. But Advocatge Mines provide asbestos fiber without any warnings to avoid injury. The San Francisco Superior Court jury, rendering the verdict in late July, assigned 5 percent of the liability to Advocate Mines for negligence, defective design and failure to warn.

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