Asbestos victim's dying words aired in wrongful death case against Buffet's railroad

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Thomas Wells ran a half-marathon at age 60 and played recreational volleyball until he was 63. At 65 years old, doctors diagnosed him with mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive lung cancer linked to asbestos exposure.

“I’m in great pain and alls I see is this getting worse,” the retired middle school teacher from Oregon said in a video deposition recorded in March 2020, four months after his cancer diagnosis. He died a day later.

Portions of Wells’ deposition were replayed Monday in a federal courtroom for a jury hearing a wrongful death case against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway.

The estates of Wells and a second mesothelioma victim accuse the railroad and its corporate predecessors in a lawsuit of polluting Libby, Montana, with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite from a nearby mine that was transported through the remote town’s rail yard in boxcars for much of last century.