A former Pittsfield GE plant engineer successfully argued in court that materials he worked with contained asbestos and caused his fatal cancer (2024)

The question, posed during a deposition on Sept. 8, 2022, was straightforward: “Where do you believe there was asbestos in the GE plant?”

“Honestly, everywhere,” answered Nicholas Barone,a Connecticut man who had worked for two years at General Electric in Pittsfield.

“It came in bulk in boxcars. It was manually unloaded,” Barone said under oath. “Guys used to screw around having snowball fights with it. They’d unload it into like, I guess, hoppers, and it was used in most formulations that were going to be in a hot application.”

But the talc that also went into the mix for the phenolic resin compound Barone was helping GE producealso contained asbestos. Barone and his estate sued the successor owners of the company that sold the talc to GE, claiming it caused the cancer that took Barone's life before the case went to trial.

On May 16, a jury seated in Bridgeport, Conn., found that Vanderbilt Minerals LLC, a successor to International Talc, was at fault for Barone’s exposure. His estate was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million for lack of consortium. The jury also ruled Vanderbilt Minerals is liable for punitive damages, to be determined later.

Between 1965 and 1967, Barone worked at GE in Pittsfield in its phenolic resin compounding facility, in the “30s” complex along Silver Lake Boulevard. The material, one of the earliest forms of plastic (also known by the trademark Bakelite), was valuable to the electronics industry, given its fire resistance thanks to the asbestos in the mix.

Barone of Milford, Conn., who died June 14, 2023, sued Vanderbilt Minerals LLC and numerous other companies in Connecticut Superior Court, claiming they contributed to his exposure, and to the mesothelioma that killed him. He left GE for Olin Corp. in 1967, and worked for that firm through 2000. Barone was diagnosed with mesothelioma—a form of lung cancer linked to asbestos exposure—in 2022.

Barone’s attorney, Brian P. Kenney, argued the talc sold to GE was contaminated with asbestos, and that Vanderbilt Minerals knew that when it purchased International Talc in 1974.

Part of the deposition was included as an exhibit in GE’s motion for summary judgment in the civil suit.

Barone testified that he was hired at GE as a plant engineer in June 1965, following his graduation from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He said he was on the floor “almost every day from the compounding area to the resin producing area” checking on the process and the equipment.

Talc proved essential in the process, he said, because it “was the thing that kind of made it flow better in the actual formulation of the product down the line.” Barone testified he would be next to workers adding talc to the process— "sometimes right up on the platform, with him."

Asked if he ever saw the operator handling talc wear a dust mask or respirator, Barone answered "no."

"And you yourself, you didn't wear a dust mask as they were doing it; is that correct?" he was asked.

"That's correct," Barone replied.

"I mean, that building was full of machines and dust and [carbon] black for the whole length of it," he added.

When asbestos arrived at the plant, Barone said, “I remember it all coming in bulk. I never saw asbestos bags. Talc, yes. Asbestos came in bulk and was stored, and then they would throw off what they needed for their mix, dump it into the mixing area.”

In the deposition, Barone said he worked in Building 36C. On a map of the campus contained in an online version of Thomas Blalock’s history of GE Power Transformer, 36C appears as a small annex adjacent to Building 36, just before Silver Lake Boulevard curves westward to follow Silver Lake’s shoreline. Those buildings were demolished and handed over to the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority as part of the 2000 consent decree in which GE agreed to remove PCBs from the site and the Housatonic River.

GE, in its motion for summary judgement, did not dispute that asbestos was present. But it said under Connecticut law, "employee's workers’ compensation is an injured employee’s exclusive remedy," thereby protecting the company from Barone's claim.

The lawsuit removed GE as a defendant on Nov. 13, 2023.