Most Pittsburgh mesothelioma cases trace back to the region’s heavy industry: the US Steel and Jones & Laughlin mills, the Westinghouse plants, and the railroads that served them. Michael C. Schafle, Esq., a Philadelphia trial lawyer admitted in Pennsylvania since 2005, represents Pittsburgh families in these cases. The distance changes nothing about how the case is built and nothing about what your family has to do.
Where Pittsburgh workers were exposed
Steel ran Allegheny County’s economy for a century, and steelmaking ran on heat. Asbestos was used through much of the twentieth century in the insulation that wrapped boilers, furnaces, steam lines, and industrial equipment (National Cancer Institute, https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/asbestos/asbestos-fact-sheet). That put it in the US Steel mills of the Monongahela Valley, in the Jones & Laughlin works along the rivers, in the Westinghouse electrical plants east of the city, and in the locomotives and rail shops that moved the freight. Millwrights, laborers, boilermakers, electricians, and maintenance crews spent whole careers in and around it, tearing out old insulation and packing in new. Many of their wives and children were exposed at home too, through fibers carried in on work clothes, and those family members can bring claims of their own when they are diagnosed.
The Pennsylvania asbestos exposure sites library covers individual plants in more detail. If your family’s mill or shop is not listed, the case does not depend on the list. It depends on your work history, which is where the investigation starts.
Railroad workers follow a different law
Pittsburgh was a rail hub, and railroad workers with asbestos disease are covered by the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (45 U.S.C. § 51) instead of state workers’ compensation. That changes who can be sued and how fault is proven, so if the exposure came from railroad work, the claim is analyzed under FELA from the first conversation. More on railroad workers and asbestos.
Where a Pittsburgh case is filed
For many Pittsburgh families the natural forum is the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County. Venue depends on where the exposure happened and where the defendant companies do business, and some cases have more than one proper county. That choice gets made deliberately, after the defendants are identified, because it can affect how the case proceeds. It is a legal decision, and your family does not have to make it alone or in advance.
How a Philadelphia attorney handles a Pittsburgh case
The evidence in an asbestos case is documentary. Employment records, union records, Social Security earnings histories, and product identification evidence are requested and reviewed the same way from any office in the state. For the parts that require a person, Michael comes to you: meetings happen at your home, at the hospital, or by phone and video, and if your deposition is needed it is arranged near where you live and scheduled around treatment. Where a step benefits from a lawyer physically present in an Allegheny County courtroom, local counsel is brought in for that step under the same fee agreement you signed at the start. What the arrangement never includes is your family driving across the state.
What this means for your family
A Pittsburgh diagnosis does not require a Pittsburgh office. It requires the work history, the diagnosis records, and attention to the clock: Pennsylvania generally allows two years from diagnosis to file (42 Pa. C.S. § 5524). Michael handles cases across Pennsylvania, and a McKeesport millwright’s case gets the same work as a case filed a subway ride from his office in Philadelphia.
Michael Schafle also keeps a site just for Pittsburgh families, mesotheliomalawyerpittsburghpa.com, with the local exposure history, the deadlines that apply, and the same free case review.
Request a free case review and he will walk through your family’s exposure history and your options.