Libby Asbestos Worker Wins $36.5 Million Verdict Against Mill's Insurer
After trial: Maryland Casualty appealed the judgment to the Montana Supreme Court (DA 23-0151). The parties reached a confidential settlement in mediation, and the appeal was dismissed with prejudice by stipulation on July 17, 2024, so no appellate court ever ruled on the verdict or the punitive award.
Won by Edwards & Culver.
Ralph Hutt worked 18 months at W.R. Grace's asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mill in Libby, Montana in the late 1960s and developed asbestosis decades later. A Cascade County jury found the mill's workers' compensation insurer, Maryland Casualty Company, breached an independent duty to warn him about hazards it tracked through undisclosed chest X-rays, and awarded $36.5 million in February 2022. The trial judge completed Montana's mandatory review of the punitive portion in January 2023 and declined to reduce it, calling the insurer's conduct reprehensible. Maryland Casualty appealed, but the appeal ended in a confidential settlement in 2024, so the verdict itself, not any later court reduction, is what stood.
What happened
Ralph Hutt spent about 18 months in the late 1960s working at W.R. Grace's vermiculite mine and mill in Libby, Montana. Workers were handed paper masks that clogged with dust almost immediately. Hutt asked for a respirator and was turned down.
Maryland Casualty Company, the mill's workers' compensation insurer, ran its occupational health program. The company X-rayed workers but never disclosed the results to the men or their doctors, and it had a documented plan to move workers who already showed early lung damage into areas with lower concentrations of asbestos dust rather than tell them what the films showed. Its own 37 page safety plan never used the word asbestos, describing the hazard instead as a dust problem. Air testing showed that as much as 80 percent of the dust inside the mill was asbestos. Hutt's own X-rays already showed asbestos damage while he was still working there. No one told him.
Decades later he developed respiratory disease. He is now homebound with asbestosis and depends on supplemental oxygen. He sued Maryland Casualty in Montana's Asbestos Claims Court, arguing the insurer owed him and his coworkers a duty to warn separate from the mine owner's own liability, because it controlled the medical surveillance program and knew what the X-rays showed.
The case went to a nine-day trial in Great Falls before Cascade County District Court Judge John W. Parker. On February 17, 2022, the jury found Maryland Casualty breached that duty. It awarded $6.5 million in compensatory damages for Hutt's care and $30 million in punitive damages, a total of $36.5 million.
Montana law requires a trial judge to independently review any punitive award before it becomes final. Judge Parker completed that review in January 2023 and left the verdict untouched, writing that the trial evidence 'overwhelmingly proved' Maryland Casualty 'deliberately and systematically acted to prevent workers from learning about the empirically proven health risks they faced from mining vermiculite,' and that the 'reprehensible conduct by MCC might very well justify a far greater award.'
Hutt was represented by A. Clifford Edwards and Chris Edwards of Edwards & Culver in Billings, working alongside Allan McGarvey, Jinnifer Mariman and Dustin Leftridge of McGarvey Law in Kalispell. Edwards handled the courtroom side of the trial.
Maryland Casualty appealed to the Montana Supreme Court. The parties reached a confidential settlement during mediation, and the appeal was dismissed with prejudice by stipulation on July 17, 2024. No appellate court ever disturbed the jury's verdict or the judge's refusal to reduce it.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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