Foster Wheeler Corp.: Asbestos-Insulated Boilers, Navy Ships & Civil Litigation

Company History: From Clinton, New Jersey to Wood plc

Foster Wheeler Corporation traces its origins to the early twentieth century, when it established itself as a leading designer and manufacturer of water-tube boilers for industrial and naval applications. The company’s headquarters were in Clinton, New Jersey, and its primary manufacturing operations included facilities at Mountaintop, Pennsylvania and Dansville, New York, where boiler components were fabricated and assembled. These facilities produced the industrial boilers and heat-recovery equipment that would be installed in thousands of facilities across the United States and internationally, and they were also the sites where workers at Foster Wheeler’s own plants accumulated occupational asbestos exposures during manufacturing operations.

For much of the twentieth century, Foster Wheeler occupied a position at the intersection of two of American industry’s most significant sectors: boiler manufacturing and engineering, procurement, and construction — the EPC services industry. On the manufacturing side, Foster Wheeler produced fired boilers, heat-recovery steam generators, and process heaters that were sold to electric utilities, refineries, petrochemical complexes, chemical plants, and the U.S. Navy. On the EPC side, Foster Wheeler designed entire industrial facilities and served as the general contractor for their construction — meaning that Foster Wheeler engineers and Foster Wheeler’s construction workforce built the very refineries and power plants where Foster Wheeler boilers were subsequently installed. The dual role as both equipment manufacturer and facility constructor gave Foster Wheeler an unusually broad footprint in the history of industrial asbestos exposure.

The asbestos connection in Foster Wheeler’s history is direct and structural. High-pressure industrial boilers operating at temperatures of hundreds of degrees require comprehensive thermal insulation across every surface that holds or transmits heat. For most of the twentieth century, the insulation systems applied to Foster Wheeler boilers consisted of asbestos block insulation, asbestos pipe covering, asbestos rope packing in valve stems and flanged joints, and asbestos-reinforced refractory cements used inside the boiler furnace walls. None of these materials were incidental accessories — they were engineered into the boiler system as necessary components, specified in Foster Wheeler’s own drawings and work orders, and often supplied by Foster Wheeler or its approved vendors as part of the complete boiler package.

Over the course of the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Foster Wheeler underwent a series of corporate transactions that transformed its structure but did not eliminate its asbestos liability. In 2014, Foster Wheeler AG merged with AMEC plc to form Amec Foster Wheeler plc, a global engineering and project management company. In 2017, Amec Foster Wheeler was acquired by John Wood Group PLC, a Scottish engineering company, and rebranded as Wood plc. Through this chain of acquisitions and mergers, the legal liabilities of the original Foster Wheeler Corporation — including its asbestos personal injury obligations — followed the corporate assets into the successor entity. Wood plc, as the current corporate heir of Foster Wheeler, is the defendant in contemporary Foster Wheeler asbestos litigation. Critically, none of the entities in this chain sought bankruptcy protection to manage asbestos liabilities, meaning that the defendant remains solvent and that claims are pursued through direct civil litigation rather than through a trust fund.

The implications of Foster Wheeler’s solvency for claimants are significant and cut in both directions. On one hand, there is no trust fund to file against — which means claimants cannot access the relatively straightforward administrative claims process available against bankrupt asbestos defendants. On the other hand, a solvent defendant with substantial assets is potentially capable of paying substantially larger judgments and settlements than the payment percentages offered by many underfunded asbestos trusts. For mesothelioma claimants with strong exposure evidence, civil litigation against a solvent Foster Wheeler successor can produce recoveries that compare favorably to or exceed what would be available through the trust fund system.

Foster Wheeler Products & Asbestos Exposure Pathways

Foster Wheeler’s product line and its EPC construction activities created several distinct exposure pathways for different worker populations. The common thread across all of them is asbestos insulation: whether the exposure occurred in a shipyard, a refinery, a power plant, or a Foster Wheeler manufacturing facility, the agent was the same — asbestos-containing thermal insulation materials that were specified, supplied, or installed as part of Foster Wheeler’s work.

The refinery and petrochemical sector deserves particular attention in the Foster Wheeler exposure story. Foster Wheeler was one of the most active EPC contractors for oil refineries in the United States and internationally from the 1940s through the 1980s. When Foster Wheeler built a refinery, its engineers designed the facility and specified every material that went into it — including the asbestos insulation on pipes, vessels, and heat exchangers throughout the plant. Foster Wheeler’s construction workforce, and the specialty subcontractors it coordinated, then installed those materials. Workers who built Foster Wheeler–designed refineries were therefore exposed to asbestos under Foster Wheeler’s direction and according to Foster Wheeler’s specifications, even if a specific asbestos product was manufactured by another company. This dual liability — as both the specifying engineer and the controlling contractor — has been recognized in asbestos litigation and strengthens claims against the Foster Wheeler successor entity.

Workers who performed maintenance, inspection, or repair work at refineries and power plants built by Foster Wheeler also faced significant exposure during operational years. Process heater tube bundles require periodic replacement; boiler waterwall tubes develop leaks and require welding repairs; valve packings and gaskets throughout the facility deteriorate and must be replaced. All of these maintenance tasks, performed by plant maintenance workers and specialty turnaround contractors, involved disturbing asbestos-containing materials that had been specified and installed as part of the original Foster Wheeler construction. Workers performing these tasks decades after the original construction — in the 1970s, 1980s, and even into the 1990s — were exposed to progressively more friable asbestos insulation that had been in service for years and was releasing fibers into the ambient air of the work environment.

Foster Wheeler Boilers in U.S. Navy Ships

Among the various exposure populations associated with Foster Wheeler products, Navy veterans and shipyard workers occupy a position of particular historical significance and legal relevance. Foster Wheeler was a significant supplier of marine boilers to the U.S. Navy, with its products serving aboard destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, and other naval vessels throughout the mid-twentieth century. Sailors who served in the engineering spaces of ships powered by Foster Wheeler boilers — particularly those who held boiler technician and machinist’s mate ratings that placed them in direct daily contact with the boiler systems — experienced sustained occupational asbestos exposure throughout their service.

The physical environment of a naval engineering space aboard a warship equipped with Foster Wheeler boilers was, from an asbestos exposure standpoint, one of the most hazardous working environments of the twentieth century. The boilers themselves were encased in asbestos block insulation. The steam lines running from the boilers to the ship’s turbines and throughout the vessel were wrapped in asbestos pipe covering secured with asbestos-containing cloth and tape. Valve bonnets were packed with asbestos rope. Flanged connections throughout the system were sealed with asbestos sheet gaskets. And the overhead insulation in the engineering spaces, applied to prevent heat buildup from the machinery, often consisted of additional asbestos-based materials. In the confined, poorly ventilated spaces of a naval engineering room, asbestos fiber concentrations from all of these sources combined to create exposure conditions that would not have been tolerated in any shore-based industrial facility operating under even the minimal regulatory standards of the 1960s and 1970s.

Shipyard workers who built or overhauled ships with Foster Wheeler boilers faced similarly concentrated exposure. The process of installing a new Foster Wheeler boiler in a ship under construction involved cutting, fitting, and applying asbestos block insulation to the boiler shell and steam drums, wrapping all the associated steam piping in asbestos pipe covering, and packing every valve and flanged connection with asbestos materials. This insulation work was performed in the close confines of an engine room or boiler room that was still under construction — a space with limited ventilation and workers from multiple trades working simultaneously in overlapping areas. Shipyard insulators who performed this work, and the boilermakers, pipefitters, and welders working alongside them, were exposed to some of the highest-intensity asbestos concentrations documented in occupational hygiene studies.

Navy veterans who were stationed at naval shipyards — and who worked in the overhaul, repair, and rip-out of aging boiler insulation from vessels undergoing renovation or decommissioning — faced acutely high-exposure events during overhaul work. Tearing out old asbestos insulation that had been in service for decades produces far more airborne fiber than applying new insulation, because aged asbestos insulation has become friable over years of thermal cycling and vibration. Sailors and shipyard workers who participated in overhaul operations on older vessels with Foster Wheeler boilers were therefore exposed to peak concentrations of asbestos fiber that may have exceeded the exposures of the original installers.

Why There Is No Foster Wheeler Trust Fund — And What That Means for Claimants

Foster Wheeler Corporation never filed for bankruptcy protection as a result of its asbestos liabilities. This distinguishes Foster Wheeler from dozens of other asbestos defendants — including Babcock & Wilcox, Combustion Engineering, and Pittsburgh Corning — that resolved their asbestos exposure by reorganizing under Chapter 11 and creating funded trust arrangements. Foster Wheeler’s corporate path was instead one of continued operation, merger, and acquisition. The company merged with AMEC to form Amec Foster Wheeler in 2014, which was then acquired by John Wood Group in 2017 to form Wood plc. Through each transaction, Foster Wheeler’s asbestos liabilities were absorbed by the acquiring entity rather than discharged through bankruptcy.

For claimants, the absence of a trust fund means that pursuing a Foster Wheeler asbestos claim requires filing a civil lawsuit. This is a more demanding process than submitting an administrative trust claim, but it also carries the potential for substantially larger recoveries. Trust funds operate on payment percentages — often paying only a fraction of a claim’s nominal value — because they must conserve assets to pay current and future claimants for decades into the future. A civil lawsuit against a solvent defendant, by contrast, is not constrained by a payment percentage. A mesothelioma plaintiff who prevails at trial or reaches a favorable settlement with a solvent Foster Wheeler successor entity can recover the full compensatory value of the claim, including medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and, in appropriate cases, punitive damages.

The practical mechanics of a civil claim against Wood plc (as successor to Amec Foster Wheeler, successor to Foster Wheeler Corporation) involve establishing two key elements: that the claimant was exposed to asbestos from Foster Wheeler products or at a Foster Wheeler–constructed or –managed facility, and that the asbestos exposure was a contributing cause of the claimant’s asbestos-related disease. The exposure element is supported by the documentary record of Foster Wheeler’s product history, its Navy supply contracts, its EPC project records, and the claimant’s employment and service history. The causation element is established through the medical diagnosis and, typically, through expert testimony from a medical professional who can explain the biological mechanism connecting asbestos fiber inhalation to the specific disease diagnosed.

Statute of limitations is a particularly important consideration in Foster Wheeler cases. Because there is no trust fund with a flexible claims window, the applicable civil statute of limitations controls when a lawsuit must be filed. Every state has its own limitations period for asbestos personal injury claims, and most apply what is called the “discovery rule” — the clock begins to run from the date the claimant received a diagnosis and learned or reasonably should have learned that the condition was asbestos-related, rather than from the date of the original exposure decades earlier. However, the limitations period once triggered can be as short as two to three years in some states, and missing that deadline permanently forecloses the right to sue. For anyone diagnosed with mesothelioma or another asbestos-related disease who had exposure associated with Foster Wheeler products or facilities, consulting an asbestos attorney as soon as possible after diagnosis is not merely advisable — it is essential to preserve the legal right to recovery.

Foster Wheeler cases are typically pursued as part of a multi-defendant asbestos lawsuit in which the plaintiff names all responsible parties whose products contributed to the cumulative asbestos exposure. Workers exposed to Foster Wheeler boilers were almost invariably also exposed to asbestos products made by other manufacturers — insulation from Owens Corning, gaskets from Garlock, packing from A.W. Chesterton, or pipe covering from Armstrong. A comprehensive multi-defendant lawsuit pursues all of these defendants simultaneously and also submits administrative claims to any applicable trust funds for bankrupt co-defendants. This strategy maximizes total recovery and ensures that no available source of compensation is left on the table.

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