Asbestos victims in Montana want BNSF held responsible [Video]

HELENA, Mont. — An attorney for two people who died of a rare lung cancer argued on Monday for a jury to hold BNSF Railway responsible for pollution in a small Montana town near the U.S.-Canada border where thousands of people were exposed to toxic asbestos dust.

The railroad — now owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. — hauled asbestos-tainted vermiculite from a nearby mine through Libby, Montana, over decades. How much BNSF knew about the health hazard from those shipments is it at the center of a weekslong civil trial that began Monday.

Attorneys for the railroad said it was told repeatedly that the product it was shipping through Libby was safe.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 declared the first-ever public health emergency during a Superfund cleanup in …