The Wall Street Journal recently featured a fascinating story about an asbestos victim.  Bill
McQueen, unlike other mesothelioma patients that we often hear about, was not a shipbuilder or
construction worker. He was an Air Force surgeon. Dr. McQueen had sought medical care,
when his chest pain persisted. He had thought it was perhaps a flareup of an old rib fracture. However,
is doctor ultimately told him that he was suffering from mesothelioma, an incurable and fatal cancer
that was encasing his left lung.

Dr. McQueen represents a different type of plaintiff in the asbestos litigation.  Rather than
targeting one or two defendants, asbestos claims are now involving dozens of corporate defendants.
Research based on asbestos filing in Philadelphia reveals that almost 50% of the mesothelioma claims
from 2006 through 2010 related plaintiffs’ exposure due to do-it-yourself type of construction or auto
mechanic projects. In contrast, those type of plaintiffs were only about 3% of similar claims in the
prior decade (1991- 2001).

The mesothelioma was so far advanced for Dr. McQueen, when his wife began to search for an
asbestos-injury attorney. In 2011, waking up from a coma, Dr. McQueen found an attorney at his bedside.
The process of understanding how Dr. McQueen was exposed to asbestos began with digging through photos
of an old family farm. Some of those photos showed rusty paint cans, cement bags, and insulation, all of
which Dr. McQueen had worked with decades before. As a result, Dr. McQueen and his wife named over two
dozen corporate defendants.

What is also interesting to see from this WSJ article is the comments. Some found the McQueens’ search
for justice “disgusting,” while others viewed the claim as a sort of fishing expedition. A scant few
seemed to recognize that this was the family’s attempt to hold negligent companies accountable.

Dr. McQueen passed away in his home this past March. Trial is set for this November, while several
defendants have settled with the family already.