MISSOULA – Prosecutors in the environmental crimes trial of W.R. Grace & Co. called their final witness Monday, but said they won’t rest their case until a federal judge rules on several pending legal motions.
Dr. Richard Lemen, a former assistant surgeon general, was called as the government’s final witness against Columbia, Md.-based Grace. The company and five former executives are charged with knowingly exposing Libby’s residents to asbestos, a substance linked to cancer.
Lemen, a retired physician from Georgia, told jurors that asbestos-tainted vermiculite mined for decades by Grace posed “an imminent risk” to the public, the Missoulian newspaper reported.
“Because the materials were so widely spread out — being put on things such as the high school track, being used in gardens, being used as covering roads, being used for playgrounds, being used for multiple purposes throughout the community — there was a very widespread distribution of this material throughout the community,” he said. “The more pathways they’re exposed to, the greater the accumulations of this material in their bodies.”
Grace attorney David Bernick, who criticized Lemen for getting paid $350 an hour to testify as an asbestos expert, said the doctor was alone in his theory.
“Indeed, those final magic words ‘imminent danger’ is an opinion you will never find in a peer-reviewed, published study,” Bernick said.
“I don’t think you ever will find a study like that,” Lemen acknowledged.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy said lawyers should be prepared to argue the admissibility of 55 exhibits Tuesday. But he told jurors their next full day won’t be until April 28 when the defense intends to call its first witness.
Molloy has scheduled a motions hearing for Monday, and defense lawyers are expected to argue why the charges should be dismissed. Motions for a judgment of acquittal are typically argued at a case’s midway point.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kris McLean said he would still like to perform a redirect examination of Robert Locke, the former Grace executive who testified for the government, but may have committed perjury on the stand.
Locke testified earlier that he spoke with Grace defendant Robert Bettacchi about selling contaminated mining property to a married couple who bought the land and converted it into a tree nursery and mushroom farm.
Locke said he tried to persuade Bettacchi not to sell the old mine site because he knew it was contaminated with asbestos. But Grace attorneys say he fabricated the conversation and said he told members of the grand jury a different story. The defense also says Locke is biased because he left the company under bitter circumstances and now has a lawsuit pending against Bettacchi.
Molloy has not decided whether to let Locke take the stand again. Defense lawyers want his testimony stricken from the record, though Bernick has acknowledged that the witness is “a tough bell to unring.”