To Danielle Bundrock, a University of Montana senior, the verdicts sounded a lot like, “No justice.”

The pain at the center of the W.R Grace trial is fresh for her. Her step-grandpa died on Easter in Libby from lung cancer due to asbestos exposure. Another 13 members of her family are diagnosed with asbestos-related disease. None of them worked at the vermiculite mine at the center of allegations of corporate wrongdoing.

“This is really disappointing,” said Bundrock when she heard that W.R Grace and three of its executives had been acquitted on May 9 of  all eight criminal charges filed against them. The charges included conspiracy, Clean Air Act violations, and obstruction of justice.  “It would have been a lot better if I had heard it went the other way. Someone has to be to blame for all the hurt that has happened to the people of Libby.”

Bundrock takes some sollace in the tears shed by some jurors as the verdict was read. They too, must have felt that Grace was accountable, she said, but must not have been shown the evidence they needed for a conviction.

About 120 students from Lincoln County attended the University of  Montana during the three months W.R. Grace trial was underway a mile from campus. According to the registrar’s office, most come from Libby, Troy and Eureka. And while they traveled the same roads to reach Missoula, they are not of one mind about the the verdict in the Grace trial.

UM senior and Libby native Brittney Larson, whose father has asbestosis from playing on baseball fields contaminated with asbestos as a child, agreed with Bundrock that justice was not served.

“I think I knew from the very beginning by reading stories about Judge Molloy’ s reactions to a lot of things, and his restrictions to a lot of things that it wasn’t going to be a good trial,” Larson said.

The acquittal seemed to be the product of legal restrictions such as the statute of limitations, which only allowed evidence prior to 1999 for the conspiracy count. Grace’s corporate power, and a weak case presented by the prosecution, also seemed to work against a conviction, Larson said.

Laws and trial rules are what set America apart, said Vance Vincent.

“As far as justice goes I’m happy because (a guilty verdict) would have showed our system is screwed – that it’s guilty until proven innocent – and that’s not how it goes,” Vincent said.

Vincent, a Libby native and UM senior in environmental studies, said he felt the verdict was fair because the prosecution “could not prove without a shadow of a doubt” that Grace was conspiring to keep health concerns a secret. Although the asbestos-related deaths in Libby are awful, “emotions cannot drive guilty, not-guilty,” Vincent added.

Vincent said that his father Bruce Vincent, founder and owner of Environomics, an environmental consulting firm based in Libby, was friends with Alan Stringer, Libby’s deceased mine manager who also faced criminal charges, and felt that Stringer was discovering the health risks of Libby’s vermiculite at the same rate as the rest of Libby. Stringer wouldn’t have hid the health risks of asbestos, especially because his children’s school yards were filled with the contaminated vermiculite, Vincent said.

Kyle Nelson, a third year UM environmental law student and Libby native, also felt that the verdict was fair. Nelson is also a legal intern with the Missoula office of Browning, Kaleczyc Berry & Hoven, the firm that provided local counsel to defendant Robert Walsh, although Nelson was not involved in the case.

While some people have claimed that power and money influenced the verdict, Nelson thinks differently.

“This is a jury of Montanans who listened to all of the evidence,” Nelson said, adding that many people assume Grace should have been guilty based on an “incomplete story,” but that the jury got the “full story” and determined they weren’t guilty.

It’s also important to remember that this wasn’t a murder trial, he added.

The prosecution might have had more success in civil instead of criminal court because of the difficulty of this case, Nelson said. For example, it’s much easier to see that a robber is guilty because you can catch him in the house, but proving that a company knowingly released harmful chemicals into a community is less straight forward and much harder to prove, he said.

Lee Mickelson, a UM senior and Libby native, said he didn’t know if justice was served or not.

“I realize it is very difficult to prove conspiracy and frankly I’m not sure if they were really ‘knowingly’ harming the town,” Mickelson said. “But I think the reason so many of us react negatively to the verdict is it makes it seem like anyone can cause an environmental disaster, but with enough money can buy themselves out of responsibility.

“Did they commit a conspiracy to harm the town? Probably not, but they did make a lot of money making a big mess and putting a lot of people at risk. I think a lot of people were looking to the case as a way of saying ‘You can’t just go around sh—ing on people!’ and the acquittal obviously dashed that to the ground.”

Some worry that the not-guilty verdict will affect health care provided for those with asbestos-related disease.

“In the long term its going to slow down any recovery these people can get,” said Mike Shilling, a UM junior from Libby. “All they can give people (affected by asbestos) is an oxygen bottle, and that’s now.”

Shilling said that with the not-guilty verdict “it’s hard to imagine how it can get worse.”

“I guess there’s going to be no improvement, which is unfortunate,” he added.

Others are concerned that this verdict will negatively affect any future civil charges.

“This is going to affect any civil proceedings now because they will be able to reference that there was no criminal or malicious action committed,” said Necia Wayland-Smith, a UM senior from Libby. “It’s hard to swallow.”

Some are looking at the verdict in relation to their jobs in Libby.

Regardless of the verdict, Libby’s asbestos contamination will “continue to be dealt with for many years to come — it’s not just a problem for folks who were there back when the mine was up and running,” said Pete Mason, a UM graduate and Libby native who works as a wildland firefighter in Libby during the summer.

Mason said that an example of these long-term affects is a 33,000 acre plot of land in Libby that is off limits to fire crews if a fire is burning because it is a health hazard. Many of the trees around the mine are being tested because they have asbestos-laced dust lodged into their tree bark, he added.

Lauren Gautreaux, a UM graduate from Libby who also worked for the town’s Center for Asbestos Related Disease, said that whether Grace knowingly endangered people’s lives or not “they were still pretty responsible for what happened” and shouldn’t have “sidestepped” the issue like they did.

“The town as a whole feels kind of defeated,” Gautreaux said. “It was one thing the whole town sort of stood against.”

However, many still aren’t accepting the verdict as a defeat.

“I feel like we have a lot of support, especially from our senators and representatives,” Larson said. “Hopefully this trial will open more people’s eyes and more people will research it and learn about it and help us fight.”

– Carmen George

(Posted May 19)

Chemical giant W.R. Grace & Co. was indicted in 2005 on charges that the company and several former executives knowingly endangering the residents of Libby, Mont., for conspiring to keep the dangers of its mining operations secret and then obstructing EPA investigation into the situation. The trial began on Feb. 19, 2009.

The verdict came down at noon on Friday, May 8. After one full day of deliberation, the jury acquitted all defendants of all charges. As the victorious defense teams left Montana for homes in Chicago and Boston, trial coverage faded from the news, but the three-month trial and its dramatic conclusion reverberated through the town of Libby.

Two hundred miles north of the federal courthouse in Missoula, the people of Libby just want the medical costs associated with asbestos-related ailments covered. Acquittal or no, they feel W.R. Grace still has a moral obligation to the town.

“I want to be compensated for my health care,” said Sally Fuchs, who moved to Libby in 1968 and is the third generation of her family to suffer from respiratory illness. “I’m not asking for millions of dollars, I’m asking for them to cover my inhaler, my visits to the CARD clinic … no more hassles,” she said, referring to Libby’s Center for Asbestos Related Disease.

Fuchs, who is diagnosed with pleural plaque, a frequent precursor to asbestosis in Libby, said that she has yet to be compensated for her medical care despite being on the Libby Asbestos Medical Plan for years.

LAMP was established in 2003 with $2.7 million from Grace in order to compensate victims of asbestos exposure, but when that money is gone the program will end. Fuchs and others say it is increasingly difficult to collect compensation.

Fuchs said that when she received her most recent benefit card from LAMP her status had been downgraded from covering supplemental benefits to just screenings. Fuchs maintains that even when she was on the plan’s supplemental benefits program she was not compensated for her inhaler costs.

Fuchs spent the Saturday afternoon after the verdict trimming plum and cherry trees around her childhood home in Libby. The house sits between vermiculite tailings piles and the Grace export plant where vermiculite was shipped across the country. Surveying the scene, Fuchs said that as a child her chances for exposure were everywhere.

“Like Dr. Whitehouse told me, I couldn’t have lived in a worse spot, I got it from all ends,” she said, referring to Alan Whitehouse, a doctor who diagnosed asbestos-related disease in many of his Libby patients. “My brother and I played in the piles of it side by side …. it was fluffy, it was soft, it felt great to jump in a pile of it. When the sun would hit it looked like gold.”

Fuchs now lives in Washington, but returns to Libby to visit family. She said she’s not afraid to visit Libby, but worries about the future for her family and the community. Regardless of any court case, she said, the people of Libby need a way to deal with their medical costs.

The concern is not hers alone. Many affected by the disease worry that the criminal trail, although not directly linked to the health care benefits they receive from the mining company, could discredit claims and make collecting compensation even harder.

The majority of the patients affected by asbestos exposure in Libby seek care and treatment from the CARD center in downtown Libby. Founded in 2003 the center is active in providing outreach, awareness and screenings to the community.

Tanis Hernandez, a social worker at CARD, said the verdict will not leave people without treatment.

“The criminal trial doesn’t mean anything to CARD,” she said. “We’ll keep providing healthcare to people suffering from asbestos related diseases.”

Hernandez said asbestos-related health problems are not a thing of the past.

“We get 15 to 20 new patients each month that we’ve never met before,” she said. “Things are still unfolding, so to speak.”

Hernandez said that the center also experiences mutations of asbestos-related diseases that they have never been seen before.

People who have long watched the course of asbestos-related disease in their loved ones have a special apprehension about the future.

Nancy Gab grew up in Libby and moved back a year ago with her husband, Tom in order to be near her mother, who suffers from asbestos-related disease.

“Mom got it from Dad. Dad worked at the mine in the late ’40s,” Gab said. Her mother doesn’t want to sue anybody, Gab said, but still needs care. “I want to get her on the medical plan, get her the meds when she needs them”

Gab fears her mother will suffer a fate similar to that of her father, who required intensive medical care before he died. “Dad died in ’84,” she said. “They had to put tubes in his lungs. He swelled up like a chipmunk.”

Tony Fantozzi, a Libby native who returned to work here as an emergency room doctor at St. John’s Lutheran Hospital, said that to people like Gab, with a wary eye on the future, the verdict seemed like an insult from the past.

“The verdict was definitely shocking, eye opening and very disappointing,” he said. “It’s kind of like a slap in the face, like an insult personally and to the rest of the community.”

There’s a lot of care involved in treating asbestos-related disease, Fantozzi said. Fifteen to 20 percent of the patients who show up at the emergency department need urgent care to help them breathe. It happens every day, Fantozzi said, even though asking for help is something not all Libby residents do easily.

“They’re loggers … blue-collar guys. They’re people that don’t call in sick. They’re people that don’t come in unless something is really wrong,” he said. “They say, ‘you know Tony, I just can’t hunt and hike like I could five years ago’… it’s a really sad picture.”

Fantozzi said that once a patient is symptomatic, the medical care they need is regular and expensive and assistance is getting harder to secure.

“They need a CT every year, a respiratory evaluation every year, somebody’s got to pay for it,” he said. “But I don’t see that happening. I don’t see their expenses getting paid.”

New patients arrive precisely because the people of Libby are self-reliant, can-do people.

Peggy Sue Dixon, a waitress at the Red Dog Saloon who raised her children in a cramped house she rented in Libby, said she has reason to believe her children, now teenagers, were exposed to asbestos in that house.

“I was a single mom. I didn’t have no choices,” she said. “I gave my kids the other rooms in the house and built one for me and the baby in the attic.”

Dixon said she laid a plank over the rafters and insulation in the attic.

“We walked over that damn stuff for more than a year,” she said. “When the light was on you could see sparkly things in the air. It was beautiful.”

Dixon lived in the attic with her infant, Jonathon. Dixon said she took Jonathan to the doctor twice for respiratory problems before he turned one year old.

“The chalked it off as asthma,” she said, and added that she never told the doctor about the asbestos-filled attic.

Jonathon, now 15, uses an inhaler. But Dixon said she doesn’t worry about him because he’s athletic and plays football and baseball.

“I know I need to get him in,” she said. “But it’s hard, you know.”

Back with her plum trees, Sally Fuchs mulls the meaning of justice for Libby.

Steady, meaningful help from W.R. Grace to pay for medications and treatment would be a step toward righting a wrong, she said, not jail time for aging executives.

“The corporation needs to be punished, not the individuals. The men are old, putting them in jail wouldn’t change anything,” Fuchs said. “If they knew they were harming us, they have to live with that, that’s between them and God.”

– Kyle Lehman and Will Grant

(Written May 13, 2009.)

In the long run the plan is to maintain this site as an archive of the trial.