Foster Wheeler Asbestos Exposure and Mesothelioma Claims

By David Meldofsky, California-licensed attorney

Last updated: August 13, 2026

Foster Wheeler built the boilers that heated a large share of the United States Navy fleet, along with condensers, superheaters, and steam generating equipment for refineries, paper mills, and power plants. Those boilers were insulated, gasketed, and packed with asbestos, and the people who installed, tended, tore down, and rebuilt them are the people bringing claims today. This page explains who tends to have a Foster Wheeler claim, why the company’s lack of a bankruptcy trust changes how those claims are handled, and what records help.

Foster Wheeler is unusual among the large asbestos equipment defendants in one respect that matters a great deal to claimants: it never filed for bankruptcy protection. There is no Foster Wheeler asbestos trust to submit a claim form to. Claims are pursued directly against the corporate entity and its successors in ordinary civil litigation, which is a slower and more adversarial path than a trust filing but is not a closed door.

Company Background

Foster Wheeler was formed in 1927 through the merger of two older firms. The Power Specialty Company traced back to the Water Works Supply Company, a Foster family business founded in 1884. The Wheeler Condenser & Engineering Company, founded in 1891, built condensers and pumps. Both predecessors had already been supplying heat-transfer equipment to the United States military, and the combined company carried that relationship forward for the next half century. The original headquarters was in New York City; the company later moved to New Jersey, then Bermuda, and in 2008 to Switzerland.

The product line grew quickly. Foster Wheeler acquired the D. Connelly Boiler Company in 1931 and added feedwater heaters, steam generator components, evaporators, and cooling towers. By the mid-1930s the company was supplying asbestos-containing marine boilers to the Navy, including boilers for the Mahan class destroyers under construction from 1934 and the Dunlap class from 1935. Production continued through the Second World War and well beyond, and the company was still supplying asbestos-containing equipment into the 1970s.

Foster Wheeler Boilers in the Navy Fleet

Most Foster Wheeler claims trace to a fireroom. A ship’s boilers sat at the center of the engineering spaces, and the equipment around them was insulated heavily because it ran hot enough to burn anyone who touched it. Boiler tenders, machinist’s mates, watertenders, and the civilian yard workers who overhauled those plants spent their working hours in a compartment where asbestos insulation, gaskets, packing, and rope were routine consumables.

A Foster Wheeler boiler itself contained a good deal of asbestos in its own components: sheet gaskets between sections, woven asbestos tape, millboard, valve packing, manifold seals, and asbestos rope. Those parts wore out and were replaced on a schedule. Every replacement meant cutting, scraping, and pulling old material out, and that work generated dust in an enclosed steel space with limited ventilation. The exposure was rarely a single dramatic event; it was years of ordinary maintenance.

Because the equipment was permanent and the crews rotated, a single boiler installation could expose many people across decades. That is also why a Foster Wheeler claim often sits alongside claims against several other manufacturers whose valves, pumps, and gaskets shared the same compartment. For the wider pathway, see asbestos exposure in shipyards and naval service and asbestos exposure from pipe insulation and boilers.

Refineries, Paper Mills, and Power Plants

Naval service is the best-known Foster Wheeler exposure route but it is not the only one. The company was first and foremost an engineering and construction firm for the energy sector, and its boilers, economizers, superheaters, and heat exchangers went into oil refineries, petrochemical plants, paper mills, and coal-fired power stations across the country. The same asbestos-containing components appeared in those installations, and the same trades handled them.

Exposure in those settings also reached people who never worked on the equipment. In one reported case a woman developed peritoneal mesothelioma after years of secondhand exposure through her husband, who worked in a Louisiana paper mill that ran Foster Wheeler boilers. Household exposure of that kind is a recognized claim category rather than an unusual theory; see secondhand asbestos exposure.

Jobs and Sites Often Involved

• Navy boiler tenders, watertenders, machinist’s mates, and enginemen
• Shipyard machinists, boilermakers, and pipefitters on overhaul and new construction
• Insulators and laggers who wrapped and stripped boiler and steam line insulation
• Refinery and power plant maintenance crews working on boilers and heat exchangers
• Paper mill and industrial millwrights servicing steam plant equipment
• Family members exposed to fibers carried home on work clothing

Related occupational pages include asbestos exposure among boilermakers, asbestos exposure among pipefitters and steamfitters, asbestos exposure in industrial insulation work, and asbestos exposure in power plants and refineries.

Foster Wheeler in Asbestos Litigation

Foster Wheeler has been a named defendant in asbestos litigation for decades and has faced tens of thousands of claims. Reporting on the company around the time of the Amec acquisition put the number of pending asbestos claims above eighty thousand. The company came close to insolvency in 2001 but did not file, and it has continued to defend and resolve claims through the ordinary tort system rather than through a bankruptcy trust.

Verdicts and settlements have run across a wide range. A San Francisco jury in 2002 found the company’s type-D marine boilers defective for failure to warn in the case of a Navy electrician who developed pleural mesothelioma after work at a Seattle steel mill and a Seattle shipbuilder. In 2008 another San Francisco jury awarded a little over two million dollars to the family of a Navy boiler tender who served aboard the USS Klondike. In other cases juries have apportioned only a share of the liability to Foster Wheeler, as in a millwright’s case where the company was assigned twenty percent of a verdict just over one million dollars.

Those numbers are illustrative rather than predictive. Outcomes depend on the exposure evidence, the jurisdiction, how many other defendants share the fault, and whether the case resolves before trial. For general context see asbestos settlement amounts.

The Bare Metal Defense

One argument comes up in Foster Wheeler cases often enough to be worth understanding before a first attorney call. The company has long contended that it should not be liable for asbestos in insulation, gaskets, and packing that someone else manufactured and that the Navy or a plant owner later installed on its equipment. The shorthand for this is the bare metal defense: the boiler as shipped was bare metal, and the asbestos came from third parties.

Courts have not treated that argument uniformly. In a 2018 appellate decision involving a machinist who worked at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco between 1965 and 1972, the court allowed the claim to proceed on the reasoning that the ships were new during his service, so it was reasonable to infer he encountered the original asbestos-containing materials supplied with the boilers rather than later replacement parts. The timing of the work relative to the installation can therefore matter a great deal.

The practical takeaway for a claimant is narrow but useful: when the exposure happened relative to when the equipment was installed is worth reconstructing carefully, because it can determine whether this defense has any traction.

Who Owns the Liability Now

Foster Wheeler was acquired by the British engineering group Amec in 2014, forming Amec Foster Wheeler, and that combined business was subsequently acquired by John Wood Group. Corporate acquisitions of this kind do not extinguish asbestos liability; it travels with the entity. A claimant does not need to trace that chain themselves, and the absence of a familiar corporate name on a modern boiler nameplate is not a reason to assume a claim is foreclosed.

Because there is no trust, there is also no published payment percentage and no claim form to submit. That distinguishes Foster Wheeler from many of the insulation manufacturers whose liabilities were resolved in bankruptcy; see asbestos trust funds and claims for how the two paths differ.

Other Equipment Manufacturers Named Alongside Foster Wheeler

A fireroom or a plant steam system contained equipment from many suppliers, and asbestos claims arising from those spaces routinely name several at once. Pages on manufacturers that commonly appear alongside Foster Wheeler include Goulds Pumps, Buffalo Pumps, Warren Pumps, and Crane Co. valves and Cranite gaskets.

Illnesses Discussed in These Cases

• Mesothelioma, both pleural and peritoneal
• Asbestos-related lung cancer
• Asbestosis
• Other asbestos-related conditions examined in litigation

Latency is the defining feature of these diagnoses, which is why exposure from the 1950s and 1960s is still producing claims now. See how asbestos exposure is proven decades later and asbestos claim deadlines after symptoms appear.

Records That Help Support a Foster Wheeler Claim

For a Navy claim, the DD-214 and service record establish the rating, the ships, and the dates, and ship records can establish which boilers were installed. For civilian work, employment records, union records, and plant records serve the same purpose. Co-worker statements matter more here than people expect, because they can establish what equipment was present and how maintenance was actually performed. Asbestos records that help support a claim walks through this in detail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a Foster Wheeler asbestos trust fund?

No. Foster Wheeler never filed for bankruptcy protection, so no trust was created and there is no claim form to file. Claims are brought against the company and its corporate successors in civil litigation.

Can I still bring a claim if I served in the 1960s?

Often yes. Deadlines in asbestos cases generally run from diagnosis rather than from exposure, precisely because these diseases take decades to appear. The periods vary by state and can be short once they start. See asbestos claim deadlines after symptoms appear.

Can I sue if I was exposed while serving in the Navy?

Claims against equipment manufacturers such as Foster Wheeler are separate from any claim against the government, and the rules that limit suits against the military do not bar them. Veterans routinely bring these cases while also pursuing VA benefits, which are handled separately.

What is the bare metal defense and does it end my claim?

It is the argument that a manufacturer should not answer for asbestos parts made and installed by others. Courts have reached different conclusions on it, and the timing of the exposure relative to when the equipment was installed can be decisive. It is a defense to be anticipated, not an automatic bar.

Do I need to remember which boilers I worked on?

No. Ship and plant records, along with the work others have already done identifying equipment in earlier cases, are how this is normally established. A rating, a ship, and a date range is a perfectly ordinary starting point.

Does it matter that the company has changed hands?

Not for the existence of a claim. Asbestos liability follows the corporate entity through acquisitions, and Foster Wheeler’s passed through Amec and then to John Wood Group. Tracing the chain is the attorney’s job rather than the claimant’s.

What if I worked around several manufacturers’ equipment?

That is the norm rather than the exception, and it does not weaken a case. Asbestos claims are typically brought against multiple defendants at once, with fault apportioned among them.

Can family members bring a claim after a loved one has died?

Generally yes, through survival and wrongful death claims, though the deadlines differ from those for a living claimant and in some states are stricter. See asbestos claim deadlines after symptoms appear.

Related Asbestos Guides

About the Author

David Meldofsky is a California-licensed attorney and the founder of Lawsuit Informer, an educational platform focused on helping people understand lawsuits, consumer safety issues, and legal rights related to defective products and toxic exposures.

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Last Updated: August 13, 2026

Educational information only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed.