Families in Media who are facing a mesothelioma diagnosis can bring a claim under Pennsylvania law without hiring a lawyer around the corner from the courthouse. Michael C. Schafle, Esq. is a Philadelphia trial lawyer, counsel in the Philadelphia asbestos docket (In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001), and he represents mesothelioma patients and families across the state, including Delaware County.
Why Media families end up with asbestos cases
Media is the Delaware County seat, a courthouse town rather than a mill town. The exposure behind a diagnosis here almost always happened somewhere else in the county: the industrial belt along the Delaware River. Men from Media and the surrounding townships spent careers at the Westinghouse turbine plant in Lester or the refineries at Marcus Hook, then drove home each evening. The National Cancer Institute reports that mesothelioma typically appears 20 to 50 years after asbestos exposure (NCI asbestos fact sheet), which is why the diagnosis often arrives decades after retirement.
Your work history matters more than your address
A mesothelioma claim is built on where you worked, in which trade, during which years. That is the first thing we reconstruct: employers, job sites, the products you handled, the co-workers who can confirm it. Delaware County’s riverfront employers left long records, and decades of earlier asbestos litigation produced testimony and documents that can support a new claim today. Our county-by-county index of Pennsylvania asbestos exposure sites shows how much of that history sits within a short drive of Media. If your family only knows fragments of the history, that is normal; most cases start with fragments.
Does the case get filed at the courthouse in Media?
Not automatically. Venue in a Pennsylvania asbestos case depends on where the exposure happened and where the defendant companies can properly be sued, and there is often more than one option. We weigh those options case by case and file where the facts give the claim its firmest footing. Michael Schafle’s home docket is Philadelphia’s dedicated asbestos program, which has operated since 1986. That background matters even when a case is filed elsewhere, because the same defendants and the same asbestos products appear in courtrooms across Pennsylvania.
Not every case starts at a plant gate
Delaware County’s exposure history also runs through the building trades. Plumbers, electricians, and insulators from Media handled asbestos pipe covering, joint compound, and gaskets on job sites all over the county, and those histories support claims without any single big-name employer. So do household cases: a spouse who spent years laundering dusty work clothes can have a claim of her own. And for some men the exposure began in the Navy, aboard ships insulated bow to stern with asbestos, before a single civilian shift was worked.
The two-year clock starts at diagnosis
Pennsylvania generally allows two years from diagnosis to file a mesothelioma claim under the discovery rule in 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524. Families who have lost someone face a separate deadline, generally two years from the death. Both are explained on our Pennsylvania statute of limitations page. The practical point is simple: the earlier the work history gets documented, the more options stay open, and the easier it is on the person who is sick.
What this means for your family
You do not need to travel for this. Records travel; your family does not. Intake, document gathering, and most communication happen by phone and mail, and testimony can usually be arranged close to home. Michael Schafle handles mesothelioma cases across Pennsylvania from his Philadelphia office. His practice includes two multi-million-dollar mesothelioma settlements resolved in 2023; prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Michael Schafle also keeps a site just for Media families, mesotheliomalawyermedia.com, with the local exposure history, the deadlines that apply, and the same free case review.
If someone in your family in Media has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the next step is a free case review.