The mill came before the town. Steelton exists because a steel works rose on the Susquehanna’s east bank in the 1860s, and steel is still made on that ground today, most famously rail, rolled there through the Pennsylvania Steel and Bethlehem Steel eras and beyond. Michael C. Schafle, Esq., a Philadelphia trial lawyer who focuses his practice on asbestos litigation, represents Steelton steelworkers, their families, and their estates in mesothelioma claims.
A mill town where the mill still runs
That continuity shapes the cases. Steelton has living retirees from the Bethlehem decades, current and recent workers from the successor operators, and widows and children of men who put in forty years before them. The exposure era peaked before the 1980s, when asbestos was standard in the plant, but mesothelioma’s 20-to-50-year latency (National Cancer Institute, https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/asbestos/asbestos-fact-sheet) means those decades are surfacing as diagnoses right now. Bethlehem Steel’s asbestos history across its Pennsylvania plants, Steelton included, is documented on our Bethlehem Steel page. The borough’s compactness matters as well: mill households lived within blocks of the plant, and spouses who laundered mill clothes for decades developed the same disease through take-home exposure, a pattern Pennsylvania courts have recognized for years.
Rail steel and asbestos
Rolling rail is sustained high-heat work. Open hearths and later furnaces, soaking pits, and reheating operations were insulated with asbestos block and refractory materials. The steam lines threading the plant wore asbestos lagging. Rollers and hookers worked in asbestos gloves and spats; maintenance crews cut, stripped, and replaced insulation as a routine trade. Steel mill workers are one of the most heavily documented occupations in asbestos litigation, and Steelton’s long employer records make its work histories easier than most to prove.
Wrongful death claims for Steelton families
A large share of these cases is brought by families after a death. Pennsylvania provides two claims: wrongful death, for the losses of the surviving spouse and children, and a survival action, brought by the estate for what the worker himself suffered, under 42 Pa. C.S. §§ 8301-8302. Each generally must be filed within two years of the death. Our wrongful death page explains who may file and how an estate is opened; none of it requires the family to have kept a single pay stub.
Dauphin County to Philadelphia, if the case calls for it
Schafle practices from South Broad Street in Philadelphia and is counsel in the city’s asbestos docket, the Court of Common Pleas program operating since 1986 (In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001). Whether a Steelton case files in Dauphin County, Philadelphia, or elsewhere is decided on the defendants and the facts. The client’s burden does not change with the courthouse: the firm collects the records, conducts the interviews where you live, and preserves testimony early when illness presses. He began his career defending these same kinds of claims, which is useful knowledge to have on your side of the table.
What this means for your family
Steelton work histories are strong ones: a century of employer records, union locals with long memories, and product documentation built through decades of litigation. What a family contributes is the story: departments, years, the trade your father worked. Schafle resolved two multi-million-dollar mesothelioma settlements in 2023. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Current workers with questions about more recent conditions are welcome to ask them; those answers differ from the retiree cases, but they deserve answers all the same, and estates can start the process even before probate questions are settled. The Pennsylvania city index shows the practice’s statewide coverage.
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