$13.5 Million for the Family of a Longview Paper Mill Electrician Who Died of Mesothelioma From Decades of Asbestos Exposure

Robert Conner spent parts of two decades working as an electrician at each of Longview Fibre's four paper mills in Longview, Washington. His job put him near the machines that turned wood pulp into paper, machines that, according to court records, workers loaded with raw asbestos by throwing in whole bags or slicing them open and pouring the contents in by hand. Longview Fibre used the asbestos to keep pitch from discoloring and deforming sheets of paper during the pulping process, a use a company representative described to The Daily News in 2002, when Longview Fibre was defending close to 300 asbestos lawsuits.

Conner was diagnosed with mesothelioma in December 2023. He died three months later, in March 2024. His widow, Dorothy Conner, took over the case as plaintiff after his death.

The lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court in January 2024, originally named 20 companies. Most were dismissed. Longview Fibre itself, Conner's employer, was never named as a defendant. What remained by the time the case reached a jury was Union Carbide, which had sold the raw asbestos, and two corporate predecessors of Elementis Chemicals, which had delivered it to the mill.

At trial, the two remaining defendants pointed at each other and at Conner's own employer. Union Carbide argued that another brand of raw asbestos, J-M Paperbestos, was also present at the Longview Fibre mills during the years Conner worked there, and that it was impossible to prove its asbestos in particular caused his disease. Elementis Chemicals argued that responsibility belonged to Longview Fibre, the mill that put workers around the material every day, rather than to the companies that supplied and delivered the material. Dorothy Conner testified that her husband had also worked a stint on the mill's yard crew, cleaning the site and disposing of empty asbestos bags; a coworker who testified for the defense disputed that he had done that work.

The jury did not accept either defendant's argument for avoiding responsibility. It found Union Carbide and Elementis Chemicals' predecessors negligent and determined that the negligence of both companies was a significant factor in causing Robert Conner's injury. On October 16, 2025, it awarded $13.5 million: $5.5 million to his estate, $5 million to Dorothy Conner, and $3 million to their children.

The verdict came more than four decades after Conner's exposure ended in 1980, illustrating the long latency of mesothelioma, a cancer that federal health officials say can take thirty to forty years to appear after exposure, with no dose considered safe. The Longview Fibre mill site Conner worked at operates today as a Smurfit WestRock facility, after a string of corporate sales and mergers: KapStone bought Longview Fibre in 2013, WestRock merged with KapStone in 2018, and WestRock merged with Smurfit Kappa in 2023.