Union Pacific Settles Omaha Lung Cancer Case

OMAHA, NE – Union Pacific Railroad Company recently settled a lawsuit brought against it by the widow of railroad worker who died from lung cancer after having been exposed to asbestos in the Omaha Shops.  The worker had been employed in the Omaha Shops in the 1960s and 1970s.  A jury trial began in the case on March 2, 2015, in Omaha, Nebraska, but at the start of the second week of trial a mistrial was granted and the case was reset for trial in January of 2016.   Evidence offered by the Plaintiff at trial included internal documents from Union Pacific which established “The Omaha Shop Complex seemed to have the greatest concentration of asbestos,” among all of the building in the Nebraska Division and that as late as 1983 Union Pacific had failed to comply with OSHA requirements regarding asbestos.  Similarly, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which were uncovered while the case was pending, revealed that over 40,000 cubic yards of asbestos soil were removed from the Omaha site in the 2000 and deposited into the Butler County Landfill.  The deceased worker, who had been employed by Union Pacific for 42 years, died from lung cancer in 2011.  An autopsy performed by Creighton University Medical Center after his death revealed that the worker had pathological evidence of asbestos exposure including asbestosis and asbestos bodies in his lungs.  Experts called to testify on behalf of the Plaintiff included Dr. Richard Kradin (Harvard Medical School), Ronald Gordon, Ph.D. (Mount Sinai Hospital), and Vernon Rose, DrPH.  The widow was represented at trial by attorneys J. Kirkland Sammons, Troy D. Chandler, Richard J. Dinsmore.