Jeannette earned its nickname, the Glass City, honestly. For most of the twentieth century, the town’s economy centered on glass plants whose furnaces ran day and night. High heat is where asbestos lived. Michael C. Schafle, Esq., a Philadelphia trial lawyer who focuses his practice on asbestos litigation, represents Jeannette and Westmoreland County residents diagnosed with mesothelioma, wherever in Pennsylvania their case belongs.
How Glass and Turbine Plants Exposed Workers to Asbestos
A glass furnace holds molten material at extremely high temperatures, and everything near it must withstand the heat without failing. For decades, the material of choice was asbestos. It showed up in furnace and lehr insulation, in the gloves and aprons worn at the hot end, in the curtains shielding work stations, and in the gaskets and packing on steam and air lines throughout the plant. Maintenance crews who relined furnaces or tore out old insulation generally had it worst, but the dust from that work tended to hang in the air for everyone on the floor.
Glass was not Jeannette’s only heavy industry. The town was also home to major manufacturing operations, including turbine and compressor works, and turbine production is widely cited among the more asbestos-heavy trades in exposure histories. Factory workers across these plants often faced overlapping sources of exposure, sometimes at more than one employer over the course of a career.
Why Mesothelioma Diagnoses Come Decades After Exposure
Mesothelioma has a long fuse. Medical literature consistently reports a latency period of several decades between asbestos exposure and diagnosis. A glassworker who left the plant years ago could reasonably be diagnosed only now, and Pennsylvania law accounts for that gap. Generally speaking, the clock for bringing a claim does not start at the moment of exposure. It starts once the disease is discovered.
Who Pays in a Pennsylvania Asbestos Exposure Claim
Usually, it is not the glass companies themselves. Claims typically target the manufacturers and suppliers of the asbestos insulation, refractory products, gaskets, and protective gear used inside the plants. When several companies share responsibility, Pennsylvania’s Fair Share Act (42 Pa.C.S. § 7102) governs how liability gets divided among them. Our Pennsylvania asbestos laws page walks through how that apportionment generally works and why naming the right defendants early matters.
Why a Philadelphia Asbestos Attorney Can Still Handle a Westmoreland County Case
Schafle’s office sits on South Broad Street in Philadelphia, and he serves as counsel in the city’s long-running asbestos litigation program within the Court of Common Pleas, a docket that has handled asbestos cases since the mid-1980s. Where a Jeannette case ultimately gets filed depends on the defendants and the facts. Venue is a strategic decision made after the work history is built, not before. The distance costs a family nothing. The firm gathers the records, interviews happen by phone or at the kitchen table, and testimony can be preserved close to home. Schafle has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America every year since 2017 and in Pennsylvania Super Lawyers from 2021 through 2026.
What to Expect When You Pursue a Mesothelioma Claim in Pennsylvania
Families do not need to collect documents. That part is the firm’s job. What helps most is memory: plant names, departments, years, the trades that worked nearby. Even partial recollections give an investigation somewhere to start, because the products used in Pennsylvania glass and turbine plants tend to be documented across decades of litigation records.
Households have standing, too. A spouse who spent years shaking out and washing dusty work clothes, or a child raised in a glassworker’s home, can develop the same disease from the same fibers, and Pennsylvania courts have generally treated those household exposure claims as worth the same investigation as a worker’s own claim. The Pennsylvania exposure site directory shows how industrial histories like Jeannette’s are mapped, and our city index covers the rest of the state.
When you are ready to talk it through, ask for a free case review, and we will take it from there.
Michael Schafle also keeps a site just for Jeannette families, mesotheliomalawyerjeannettepa.com, with the local exposure history, the deadlines that apply, and the same free case review.