Mesothelioma cases in Scranton usually trace back to one of three working worlds: the railroad shops, the anthracite industry, or the city’s mills and factories. Each supports a claim under Pennsylvania law, and sorting out which path fits your history is the first job. Michael C. Schafle, Esq., a Philadelphia trial lawyer and counsel in the Philadelphia asbestos docket (In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001), represents mesothelioma patients statewide, including Lackawanna County.
The rail shops were asbestos workplaces
Scranton was a railroad city. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western and the Erie both maintained shops here, and shop work meant stripping and reapplying boiler lagging, handling pipe insulation, and changing brake components, all of it asbestos for most of the twentieth century. Shop air was the hazard itself; a machinist who never touched lagging still worked all day in what the stripping crews released. Claims for these workers often run under FELA, the federal law covering railroad employees (45 U.S.C. § 51), rather than workers’ compensation. Our railroad workers page explains the FELA route in plain terms.
Anthracite work, and the jobs around it
The coal industry’s exposure was not limited to the mines. Breakers, wash plants, and power houses used asbestos-insulated boilers and steam lines, and mine machinery ran on asbestos friction parts. Men moved between mining and mill work as the anthracite industry declined, which is why a single Scranton work history often touches several employers. By the time the mines closed, many men had two or three exposure chapters behind them without knowing any of them mattered. The trades involved are profiled in our occupations hub, and industrial sites statewide are indexed at Pennsylvania asbestos exposure sites.
The mills and factories in the mix
Scranton Lace and the city’s other plants round out the picture: steam-driven factories with insulated boiler rooms and maintenance crews who handled asbestos materials as a matter of routine. Scranton Lace’s complex ran on the same steam plant design as every large factory of its era, and a patient who spent five years in one mill and twenty in another accumulates defendants from both. For a patient who worked more than one of these jobs, the claim does not have to choose. Every employer and every product in the history can add defendants and trust claims.
Deadlines and the order of operations
Pennsylvania generally allows two years from diagnosis to file, under 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524, and families generally have two years from a death for wrongful death and survival actions; see our statute of limitations page. FELA has its own clock. The sequence that protects everything: document the work history first, then let the deadlines and venue options sort themselves around the facts. Mesothelioma typically develops 20 to 50 years after exposure, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI asbestos fact sheet), so a patient diagnosed today may be recalling job sites from the 1960s; the discovery rule expects exactly that.
What this means for your family
Distance from Philadelphia changes nothing about the representation. Records cross the state easily; sick people should not have to. Work histories are taken by phone from a kitchen table in Scranton, and testimony is scheduled locally around treatment. Venue is chosen strategically, case by case; Pennsylvania and federal rules usually allow options, and none is promised in advance. Lackawanna County is far from South Broad Street on a map and no distance at all in practice. Michael Schafle handles cases across Pennsylvania; his practice includes two multi-million-dollar mesothelioma settlements resolved in 2023, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Whether the history runs through the rail shops, the collieries, or the mills, begin with a free case review.