BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)—A Montana judge has approved a $43 million settlement for more than a thousand asbestos victims who said state officials knew that dust from a mine was killing people but failed to intervene.
An estimated 400 people have been killed and 1,750 others were sickened by asbestos released from a W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine outside the mountain town of Libby. Lethal dust from the mine once blanketed the small community about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, and asbestos illnesses were still being diagnosed more than two decades after the mine was shuttered.
District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock in Helena approved the settlement award, which stemmed from lawsuits filed against the state 10 years ago. Sherlock had dismissed the victims' claims in 2002, a decision the state Supreme Court overturned.
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