Essington families dealing with mesothelioma usually do not have to guess where the asbestos came from. The Westinghouse turbine works at Lester, the dominant employer in Tinicum Township for generations, is at the center of case after case from this corner of Delaware County. Michael C. Schafle, Esq., a Philadelphia trial lawyer, represents these workers and their households in claims throughout Pennsylvania.
The turbine works at Lester
Steam turbines run on superheated steam, and in the decades the Westinghouse plant at Lester was building them, superheated steam meant asbestos insulation. Machinists, winders, assemblers, laggers, and test-floor crews worked around insulated casings and piping daily, and the maintenance trades cut into that material for every repair. Turbines shipped out with asbestos aboard too, which is why Lester-built equipment shows up in exposure histories from power plants and Navy ships far beyond Pennsylvania. If your career, or your father’s, ran through that plant, you were in the exposure zone it created.
A short drive from other documented sites
Tinicum sits between two more of the region’s heaviest exposure sources. Downriver, Sun Shipbuilding in Chester put thousands of tradesmen inside asbestos-packed hulls. Delaware County work histories often stack these employers together: a few years at the shipyard, a decade at Westinghouse, side work in construction. Every stop matters, because each one can add responsible companies to the claim.
Filing in the Philadelphia courts
Essington is minutes from Philadelphia, and that proximity has legal meaning. Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas has run a dedicated asbestos program since 1986, and Mr. Schafle is counsel on that docket, In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001. Our page on the Philadelphia asbestos docket explains how it works. That said, no venue is automatic: where an Essington case is actually filed gets decided on the facts, after the exposure history is assembled, because the right court for one family is not always the right court for another.
What a claim requires, and what it does not
A viable case needs a mesothelioma diagnosis and a traceable exposure history. It does not need you to produce old pay stubs, name specific insulation brands, or remember exact dates. Those gaps get filled by Social Security earnings records, union and plant documents, and testimony developed in years of litigation over the same facilities. Pennsylvania generally gives a patient two years from diagnosis to file under 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524, and gives families of workers who have died their own two-year period. Spouses and children exposed to dust on work clothes can also qualify, without any plant employment of their own. Navy veterans hold a parallel path: turbines and boilers aboard ship carried the same insulation the Lester plant worked with, and a civilian claim does not touch VA benefits.
One firm, the whole state
Green & Schafle, LLC handles mesothelioma cases from its South Broad Street office in Philadelphia for clients everywhere in Pennsylvania; Essington is among the communities on our statewide coverage hub. Mr. Schafle resolved two multi-million-dollar mesothelioma settlements in 2023. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. What those cases share with yours is the method: reconstruct the work history, identify every responsible company and trust, and press each claim without asking the family to run errands for the case.
What this means for your family
A Westinghouse Lester history makes the central question in a mesothelioma case, where did the asbestos come from, largely answerable from the start. The remaining questions are about deadlines and defendants, and those are questions a lawyer can resolve quickly.
Start with a free case review; one conversation will tell you whether there is a claim worth filing.