Chester’s asbestos story is above all a shipyard story. Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock, one of the largest shipyards of the Second World War, put tens of thousands of area residents to work building and repairing vessels packed with asbestos insulation. Those workers and their families hold some of the strongest mesothelioma claims in Pennsylvania, and Michael C. Schafle, Esq., counsel on the Philadelphia asbestos docket a few miles upriver, handles them.
Why Shipyard Asbestos Exposure Hit So Hard
Ships concentrated asbestos in confined spaces. Boilers, turbines, steam piping, and bulkheads were insulated with it, and much of the installation happened below decks with little ventilation. Insulators sawed and fitted block insulation, laggers mixed asbestos cement in open buckets, and every trade working nearby; welders, electricians, shipfitters, painters, breathed the same air. During wartime production surges, crews worked shoulder to shoulder around the clock.
The yard kept building and repairing vessels for decades after the war, too, so exposure at Sun Ship isn’t only a 1940s story. Construction continued well into the 1970s and beyond, and the yard didn’t close for good until 1989, meaning workers hired long after the war still labored amid the same materials. Our Sun Shipbuilding exposure page details the yard, and the shipyard workers guide covers the trades themselves.
Three Generations Still Filing Claims Today
The yard’s wartime generation is largely gone, but claims continue from three directions: workers from the yard’s later decades, still living, diagnosed after a latency period that medical researchers describe as often running several decades between first exposure and disease; children of shipyard workers, exposed to dust carried home years ago; and estates of workers who died of mesothelioma recently enough that a wrongful death claim may still be timely under Pennsylvania law.
What Compensation Can Look Like
Sun Ship litigation over the decades established which manufacturers supplied asbestos products to the yard, and that record now works for new claimants. Cases typically combine:
- Lawsuits against surviving asbestos product manufacturers
- Bankruptcy trust claims, drawing on the tens of billions of dollars in assets the U.S. Government Accountability Office has documented across dozens of active asbestos trusts
- Veterans’ claims, where Navy service overlapped shipyard exposure
A Delaware County Case, Handled by Philadelphia Counsel
Chester is a short drive from Michael Schafle’s office at Green & Schafle in South Philadelphia, making this one of the communities where in-person meetings are easiest to arrange. He is counsel in Philadelphia’s dedicated asbestos litigation program. That proximity does not predetermine where a Chester case gets filed; venue follows the facts and the defendants, and the decision is made openly with the client once the exposure record is assembled. The Pennsylvania city index lists the practice’s statewide reach.
The Clock Is Already Running
Pennsylvania law gives a living patient a limited window after diagnosis to file suit, and that window is strict. The statute of limitations page walks through how that deadline is measured and what happens in edge cases. The practical translation: the time to investigate is immediately after diagnosis, while treatment decisions are also being made. A law firm exists partly so the family doesn’t have to do both jobs at once. If a shipyard worker in your family died of mesothelioma recently, a survivor’s claim may still be timely and deserves the same prompt look.
What This Means for Your Family
If your father, grandfather, or you worked at Sun Ship in any trade, in any decade, a mesothelioma diagnosis deserves a legal evaluation. The yard’s asbestos history is thoroughly documented, which shortens the distance between your story and a filed claim.
Michael Schafle also maintains a site just for Chester families, mesotheliomalawyerchesterpa.com, with local exposure history, applicable deadlines, and the same free case review.
A free case review takes a few minutes to request and costs your family nothing.