When the federal government took on a spate of railroad company bankruptcies, the end result was Conrail, which began operations in 1976. According to a new mesothelioma lawsuit filed by a Florida man and his wife, that company failed to adequately protect him from the asbestos exposure that led to his injury and his wife’s loss of consortium.

Railroads, naval ship yards, and other heavy industry commonly used asbestos and asbestos-containing products for the insulating properties of the fibrous material. However, Lee C. Carpenter alleges that Conrail and the manufacturers of the products it used failed to design products that would limit the asbestos exposure. Instead, through common and expected use, they “subjected such asbestos replacement component parts to pressures, temperatures and force such as to release the formerly bound-up asbestos into the air as airborne fibers that presented a significant danger to human health, as they would be breathed in by anyone in the area around the products during or after its use.”

As a result, Carpenter either was diagnosed with mesothelioma or asbestos lung cancer years after the initial exposure. Yet even at the time of the exposure, companies knew or should have known of the link between the insulating material and types of lung cancer. By the 1960s and 1970s, his mesothelioma lawsuit alleges that there were alternatives available, but that Conrail and the suppliers either specified components containing the material or produced parts that contained it for various reasons.

The possibility of diseases including asbestos lung cancer still could have been minimized, according to the complaint, although it would have been less than ideal. Policies from the named defendants could have included ventilators and other protections and warnings to workers of the potential dangers regarding the material.

The mesothelioma lawsuit is Lee C. Carpenter et al. v. Air & Liquid Systems Corporation et al., Case No. 13-cv-7240, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.