MISSOULA, Mont. - In what many have called the industrial pollution criminal trial of the century, on Wednesday, March 25, a former Grace executive and key government witness, Robert Locke, was harshly cross-examined by Grace defense attorney David Bernick. The trial is the result of indictments against five former Grace executives that date back to 2005, when the Maryland-based chemical giant's executives were charged with conspiring to violate provisions of the federal government's Clean Air Act. The defendant's face up to 70 years in prison for covering up the fact that Grace's vermiculite mining operations near Libby, Montana had been responsible for exposing mine workers and Libby townspeople to dangerous levels of asbestos-a known cancer causing agent.
Locke is a former global vice president of Grace's building products division, and is named in the government's prosecution as an unindicted co-conspirator who has refused government offers of immunity in the case, but who has decided to testify against his former employer anyway. Locke also has a lawsuit against Grace, and defense counsel Bernick accused Locke of offering self-serving testimony against a company he has a personal grudge against.
"You're a Harvard MBA. You have personal knowledge about the facts in this case. You have a lawsuit of your own against Grace, and you have volunteered evidence in this case against Grace," Bernick said. "Correct?"
"Yep. It was time to stand up and do the right thing," answered Locke.
"You're part of a case that you would very much like to see prosecuted to success, right?" questioned Bernick.
"I can't answer that question without an explanation," countered Locke. "You're putting a spin on this."
Bernick has taken strong objection to Locke's testimony that Grace attempted to thwart a government investigation into the possible health hazards of the company's Montana mining operations. Locke further testified that Grace executives knew full well of the dangers of asbestos, yet decided to continue to expose mine workers and Libby citizens to the extremely hazardous material.
Asbestos exists in abundance in countries around the globe. It can be found in the ground or in above grade rock formations in a variety of chemical compositions, colors, and types. Asbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral that has been utilized by mankind for thousands of years, and from the late 1800s until the early 1970s, asbestos was widely prized by countless industries around the world. Asbestos has superior resistance to heat, electrical current, and corrosive chemicals; asbestos has a very high tensile strength as well, and for all these reasons and more, asbestos found its way into countless products from auto parts to soil aeration products to talcum powder.
In the early 1970s, scientists and health experts confirmed the fact that certain types of exposures to asbestos posed a significant threat to human health. When microscopic, airborne asbestos fibers are inhaled into the lungs, they become permanently imbedded in soft tissues where they can remain dormant and undetected for decades before causing the onset of serious respiratory diseases such as asbestosis and peritoneal mesothelioma, the latter being a particularly aggressive and lethal form of cancer. All of this, according to Locke, was well known by Grace executives when they literally coated every square foot of Libby with a layer of asbestos dust that has since been blamed for over 200 deaths, as well as approximately 1,000 asbestos-caused illnesses in the tiny mining town with a total population of less than 2,700 citizens.
Locke's testimony for the prosecution is buttressed by numerous internal memos and other confidential Grace documents he managed to remove from company files before he was fired in 1998. Locke stored his cache of Grace Company documents in boxes in his basement in case the day would come when he would need them, and government prosecutors say they're glad he did.
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