Cloquet's Conwed employees feel aftermath of asbestos 36 years later

Mar. 25—On Dec. 13, 2018, Gene "Randy" Backe, of Cloquet, was diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma likely resulting from asbestos exposure, according to a doctor's report. He died as a result of the cancer on Sept. 28, 2020, at age 76.

In 2019, Backe and his wife, Carol, filed a liability claim against the Conwed Corp., seeking punitive damages as a result of the secondhand asbestos exposure Backe claims he suffered at the hand of the factory.

Since closing its Cloquet headquarters in 1985, the Conwed Corp. has faced hundreds of claims from former employees and their families alleging they developed health issues as a result of their time spent in the factory.

From roughly 1958 until 1974, Conwed, formerly known as the Wood Conversion Co., used asbestos in the production of its Lo-Tone mineral board and ceiling tile products, potentially exposing about 6,000 workers to the hazardous ingredient.

Asbestos is a fire-resistant material that was largely used in production factories throughout the 1900s. It is now known as the leading cause of multiple health defects, such as lung diseases like asbestosis and mesothelioma — a cancer that can take up to 20 years to present itself and has a life expectancy of five years or less.

According to a study published by the Minnesota Department of Health in 1993, approximately 30% of former Conwed workers screened by the state suffered from lung abnormalities that may have been caused by asbestos exposure.

Since then, many former Conwed employees and their families have come forward with claims against the company.

However, most of those affected are limited in their ability to hold Conwed accountable due to state laws that prevent Minnesota employees from suing their employer.

The legal details

Workers' compensation is an exclusive remedy under Minnesota law, meaning that an employee is unable to sue their employer for civil damages outside of the workers' compensation system.

This means it is rare for an injured Conwed employee to take their case further than a simple claim and quiet settlement.

However, there are some exceptions, such as the Backe case, which may be one of the few to see a court trial.

The case, filed in July 2019, claims Conwed provided no warnings to its employees about the dangers of asbestos and did not take adequate safety precautions, leading Backe's father — a long-time Conwed employee — to unknowingly expose his household to asbestos, which in turn led to Backe's development of mesothelioma.

Backe himself was also a Conwed employee on and off for about two years.

According to Conwed's corporate counsel, Robert Brownson, Conwed has adequately compensated the Backe family for their asbestos injuries under the workers' compensation laws, in addition to paying all medical and funeral expenses.

"In essence what they're trying to do is get paid twice for the same injury," Brownson said. "We have limited assets, and we shouldn't be paying people twice."

Because of this, Conwed contends the plaintiffs have no basis for further payment. The corporation also argues that "mere negligence" does not constitute a claim of punitive damages.

"Mr. Backe was actually a Conwed employee, during which he would have had the bulk of his alleged Conwed asbestos exposure," Conwed said in a 2019 court opposition. "The 'additional' exposure upon which his indivisible injury of mesothelioma is based was only slight and incidental at best."

In light of Backe's death, Carol Backe has opted to change the case from a product liability suit to a wrongful death suit. Brownson said she has also filed a dependency claim, for which Conwed will pay her.

The Backe trial date was originally set for Feb. 22, 2021, but was deemed "non-essential" in the COVID-19 pandemic after Backe's death and has been pushed to May 17.

A photo featured in a 1989 Duluth News Tribune article shows X-ray images of healthy lungs (left) versus the lungs of a mesothelioma patient. (Photo by Dave Ballard, courtesy of University of Minnesota Duluth Archives and Special Collections)

"Mrs. Backe and the residents of Cloquet and the surrounding areas continue to suffer the consequences of Conwed's indifference," Chad Alexander, of the Sieben Polk law firm, said in a statement to the Pine Journal.

Carol Backe declined to provide a comment for this article due to pending litigation.

Behind the case

Backe spent most of his life as a Cloquet resident. From the time he was born in November 1943 until he married in 1966, Backe lived with his parents, Gene and Esther, in their Cloquet home located just about a mile from Conwed.

He remembered visiting his father at the Conwed factory when he was in high school. In court testimonies, he recalled walking through the area where his father worked and seeing bags of what he later learned was asbestos being dumped into large machines.

According to court records, Backe's father worked as a millwright in the factory from approximately 1935 until 1975. He was mainly responsible for fixing plant machinery located in the factory's Mill C and Lo-Tone areas, which were later found to be heavily contaminated with asbestos.

Gene and Carol Backe began dating in 1962, and she was often in the family's home during that time. She remembered seeing Backe's father come into the house after work with clothes covered in dust.

"I couldn't believe how white it was ... you wouldn't know what the color was unless you saw the other suit or if he had just put on a fresh one," she said in a 2019 court deposition.

The plaintiffs testified that the dirty work clothes were often hung on hooks alongside the family's jackets, and Backe often assisted his mother with the laundry, shaking off his father's work overalls in a room near the kitchen.

He would also regularly drive his father's car, which he said was always filled with the same white dust.

Backe eventually followed in his father's footsteps and began working at the Conwed factory on and off while he was in college, starting in 1963 and lasting until 1965.

He even worked in the same areas as his father: Mill C and Lo-Tone. During a deposition, he described the Lo-Tone area as very fast-paced and dusty.

"(I)t kind of looked like a snowstorm," he said. "It was always dusty without fail."

When Carol and Gene Backe married in 1966, he moved out of his parents' home, but the two spent most of their life together in Cloquet, and would visit his mother and father weekly.

Backe graduated from college in 1968, and the pair moved to the Twin Cities area for about a year, after which they returned home to Cloquet, where they remained for the rest of their lives.

Backe previously smoked and occasionally used alcohol, but had quit smoking about 30 years prior to his mesothelioma diagnosis, according to a doctor's report.

Most of Backe's career was spent teaching elementary school in Carlton, and in his later years, he worked as a substitute teacher. He and Carol had two children and three grandchildren.

Backe also had siblings, one of whom died of a "breathing disease" sometime around 2017, Backe said in a deposition. Family history given in a doctor's report indicated his father suffered from heart disease and his mother had a history of melanoma.

Shortly after his diagnosis, Backe lost the ability to do many everyday tasks, and had to stop teaching.

"I can't do much," he said in a court deposition. "I used to mow my lawn and I'd get done within two tank-fulls easily. Now, I can't get done in three well; I don't even try anymore. My grandson cuts the grass. ... The only thing I still do is ... every day I water my dad and mother's gravesite and Carol's mom and dad('s gravesites). That's it."

According to Carol's 2019 deposition, Backe became weak and started to suffer from falls.

"His health is deteriorating daily," she said. "He is not able to walk far. He has to spend a lot of time in bed. His condition is bad."

Carol once shared that he had fallen badly three times in one week.

"(H)e tripped on the sidewalk ... he has a lot of scrapes and a black eye," she said. "He broke his glasses."

Carol's father, Clifford Sather, also worked at Conwed and she said she would not have been surprised if he had suffered from health issues as many other workers have.

The aftermath

Backe is not the first Conwed employee to develop mesothelioma. According to court records, there have been 39 cases that reportedly came out of the plant since the 1980s.

Before Backe's case, the most recent mesothelioma case brought against Conwed was by former employee Darrel Drewlow and his wife, Beverlee, after Darrel was diagnosed with mesothelioma. He died in 2018, and the results of the case are considered confidential.

It is not uncommon for mesothelioma legal cases to progress quickly due to plaintiffs' shortened life expectancies.

The majority of concern for Conwed workers started in June 1986 when approximately 270 Conwed workers were screened for asbestos in their lungs.

By August 1986, the Duluth News Tribune reported that 61% of those screened had been diagnosed with health issues related to asbestos exposure, and more screenings followed.

About 270 Conwed workers gathered in the Cloquet High School one evening in 1989 to hear the results of their health screenings. (Photo by Charles Curtis, courtesy of University of Minnesota Duluth Archives and Special Collections, Duluth News Tribune Photograph Collection)

"It scares me," former Conwed employee Raymond Jaski told the Duluth News Tribune in 1989. "I will have physicals every six months for the rest of my life."

Not all Conwed employees voiced negative feelings, even when asbestos was found in some of their lungs.

"There's no point in getting angry," former worker Glen Richards told the Tribune in 1989. "You're only going to live 'til you die anyway."

That year, the News Tribune reported that health officials found the rate of lung cancer death among Cloquet men to be 36% higher than elsewhere in the state and the rate of mesothelioma was 70 times the normal rate.

"Conwed is a killer," an attorney representing the Backe family said in a court transcript.

A murky history

Conwed was founded in 1921, shortly after the fires of 1918 left many Cloquet area residents without work. It employed hundreds of workers at a time, and began using asbestos in production in 1958, although lab development for asbestos products began around 1957.

Court documents show a 1957 memorandum written by J.J. (John) Kozacik of Conwed Research and Development Department to H.E. Walter, director of manufacturing, among others, describing the problems associated with the new asbestos mineral fiberboard.