Mole-Richardson Asbestos Exposure and Mesothelioma Claims

By David Meldofsky, California-licensed attorney · Founder, Lawsuit Informer

Last updated: August 17, 2026

For most of the twentieth century, the lighting that lit American film and television sets came with cables insulated in asbestos. Mole-Richardson supplied much of that equipment. In February 2026, a Los Angeles jury found the company one hundred percent liable for a Hollywood cameraman's mesothelioma, made a finding of malice, and awarded $33.4 million. Unlike most asbestos defendants, Mole-Richardson has no bankruptcy trust. These claims are ordinary lawsuits.

Asbestos litigation has been organized for fifty years around shipyards, refineries, power plants, and construction sites. Film and stage crews were exposed too, and they have been largely invisible in that history. Camera operators, gaffers, grips, and stagehands spent decades handling equipment built with asbestos-insulated cable, in enclosed soundstages, often for eight to fourteen hours a day. The Stephenson verdict is the clearest signal yet that this exposure population is real and that juries understand it.

Important:

This page provides general educational information about Mole-Richardson asbestos litigation and does not constitute medical or legal advice. Allegations described here reflect claims made in litigation and findings reported in public court records.

Key Takeaways:
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Company Background

Mole-Richardson was founded in Hollywood in 1927 by Peter Mole and Elmer Richardson, at the moment the film industry was moving from daylight stages to controlled interior lighting. The company built carbon arc and incandescent fixtures for motion picture and television production and became the dominant American supplier of studio lighting. Its fixture names entered the working vocabulary of the industry, and its equipment was standard on soundstages, backlots, and location shoots for decades. The company also rented equipment, which put the same fixtures and cables into the hands of crews on productions of every size.

That reach matters to the litigation. A manufacturer whose equipment was on nearly every American set for half a century created an exposure population that is correspondingly large and correspondingly dispersed. Crew members moved between productions, studios, and cities. Many worked as day players through union dispatch rather than as permanent employees of any one studio.

The corporate entity today

The February 2026 case was captioned against PK&P Investment Co., formerly known as Mole-Richardson Co., Ltd., together with PK&P Investment Co., formerly known as Mole-Richardson Rentals. Legacy asbestos claims are directed at those entities. The naming is worth understanding at the outset, because it is a common point of confusion: the business operating in Hollywood under the Mole-Richardson name today is not necessarily the same legal entity that answers for exposures from the 1950s through the 1990s. Anyone evaluating a claim should have counsel confirm the correct defendant, since entity structures in this litigation have changed over time.

What Mole-Richardson does not have is an asbestos bankruptcy trust. Most of the household-name asbestos defendants, the insulation and building product manufacturers, went through Chapter 11 decades ago and now resolve claims through trust claim forms with published payment percentages. Mole-Richardson never took that route. A claim here is a lawsuit, filed in court, tried or settled on its own facts. That is a meaningful difference in how a case is built and what it can be worth.

How Asbestos Exposure Happened Around Lighting Equipment

The central allegation in this litigation concerns motion picture cable. Studio lighting draws heavy current and runs hot, and for much of the twentieth century the insulation used on the power cables serving those fixtures was asbestos. Plaintiffs allege that the cables supplied and rented with Mole-Richardson lighting were insulated in this way, and that the fixtures themselves incorporated asbestos-containing components.

The exposure mechanism alleged is ordinary handling rather than any single dramatic event. Cable on a set is not installed once and left alone. It is coiled and uncoiled, dragged across stage floors, wrapped around scaffolding and pipe grids, run up ladders, pulled taut, stepped on, and re-rigged every time a lighting setup changes. On a working set that happens many times a day. Plaintiffs describe cable in lengths from a few feet to twenty-five feet, moved constantly as lights were repositioned between shots.

Several features of the work make the allegation coherent. Insulation on power cable degrades with heat and age, and studio lighting produces substantial heat. Old cable becomes brittle and sheds. Crews worked in enclosed soundstages with limited ventilation, where airborne dust remains suspended rather than dispersing. Shifts were long. And the same crew handled the same aging inventory across many productions.

Plaintiffs have also alleged exposure from coatings and materials on the fixtures themselves, describing material coming off the lights during handling. One plaintiff testified to seeing particles in the air and to the taste of them when breathing on the job, a description that tracks how workers in other asbestos trades have long described dusty conditions.

None of this required anyone to work directly with insulation as a trade. That is the feature of this exposure population that distinguishes it from the classic asbestos cases. A camera operator was not an insulator, a pipefitter, or a shipyard lagger. He was near equipment that was being handled by others and handled some of it himself, in a confined space, for a working lifetime.

Jobs and Sites Often Involved

Because lighting is rigged and struck at the center of a set, the exposure radius covers most of the crew rather than one department.

The locations extend well beyond the studio lots. Soundstages in Los Angeles and New York, television studios, location shoots, Broadway and regional theaters, concert and festival rigging, convention and trade show production, and school, church, and civic auditoriums all used the same equipment. The New York case described below involved lighting rigged for street festivals and block parties, not a film set at all.

If you worked in film, television, or live production and have been diagnosed with mesothelioma or another asbestos-related disease, the relevant question is not only which studio employed you but which equipment was on the sets you worked. See records that help support an asbestos claim.

Mole-Richardson in Asbestos Litigation

Stephenson v. PK&P Investment Co. (Los Angeles, February 2026)

George Stephenson, an 80-year-old Army veteran and longtime Hollywood cameraman, was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma in December 2024. He filed suit in the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, alleging that asbestos-insulated motion picture cables and other components of Mole-Richardson lighting equipment exposed him to asbestos across a career in film production running from the late 1960s into the 2000s. The case was tried before Judge Stephen Czuleger. By the time of trial, Mole-Richardson was the only remaining defendant.

Stephenson brought claims in negligence, strict liability, breach of express and implied warranties, and premises owner and contractor liability, alleging that the company knew the danger, concealed it, and failed to warn those who worked around its products. He waived economic damages and tried the case on non-economic harm alone.

The trial lasted roughly nine days. On February 27, 2026, after approximately two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict for the plaintiff on all causes of action, including a finding of malice, and found Mole-Richardson one hundred percent liable. The award was $33,384,400 in non-economic damages, comprising $3,640,000 for past harm and $29,744,400 for future harm. The case resolved before the punitive damages phase was completed.

The jury's findings tracked the full theory of the case. It found the company negligent and that the negligence was a substantial factor in increasing the risk of disease; that the company knew or should have known its products were dangerous; that it learned of the defect after sale and failed to recall, retrofit, or warn, where a reasonable manufacturer would have done so; and, on the product claims, that the product failed to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect and that the risks of the design outweighed its benefits.

Two aspects of the defense are worth noting because they are likely to recur. The company argued that the chrysotile asbestos used in lighting cords does not cause mesothelioma, an argument the jury rejected on expert testimony. And its chief executive presented the company as a small family business, a characterization plaintiff's counsel countered by pointing to the scale of its supply to the industry over decades. The two-and-a-half-hour deliberation, on a finding of malice and one hundred percent liability, suggests the jury found neither argument persuasive.

Tytell (New York)

A separate New York case involved a stagehand who alleged exposure in the summer of 1969 while setting up lighting for festivals and block parties in New York City, wrapping Mole-Richardson power cables around scaffolding. He alleged exposure both from the cords and from coating coming off the lights during handling, describing visible particles in the air. Mole-Richardson moved for summary judgment. The court found the evidence the company offered in support of the motion to be inadmissible hearsay that did not meet the standard for consideration, and the case was allowed to proceed.

The two cases are useful read together. They involve different decades, different states, different work, and different exposure settings, and both turn on the same equipment. Live event and theatrical work carried the same exposure as film production.

What the absence of a trust means

Because there is no Mole-Richardson asbestos trust, there is no claim form, no published payment percentage, and no administrative track. A claim is filed and litigated. The practical consequences are real. Evidence of product identification matters more, because there is no trust criteria to satisfy in the abstract. Discovery is available. And the recoverable amount is not capped by a trust's payment ratio, which is why verdicts against solvent, untrusted defendants can run substantially higher than trust distributions on comparable facts.

Other Sources of Exposure in Film and Stage Work

Lighting cable is the exposure that has now been tried to verdict, but it is not the only asbestos a production crew encountered. Claims in this area often involve more than one source and more than one defendant.

Illnesses Discussed in These Cases

The diseases at issue are the same ones that arise across asbestos litigation generally, and the latency pattern is the same. Symptoms usually appear twenty to fifty years after exposure, which is why a crew member who last handled cable in the 1980s may be receiving a diagnosis now.

Anyone with a diagnosis and a production work history should tell the treating physician about the occupational exposure, and should not wait on the medical picture to become fully settled before speaking to a lawyer. Filing deadlines run from diagnosis in most states, and they are unforgiving.

Records That Help Support a Claim

Film and television work presents a proof problem that shipyard and plant cases usually do not. Crew members rarely worked for one employer at one site for thirty years. They moved between productions, studios, and cities, often dispatched through a union hall rather than hired directly. Establishing where someone worked, and what equipment was there, takes a different set of records.

Union and pension records are worth requesting early. They take time to produce, and in a mesothelioma case the timeline is compressed by the illness itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a Mole-Richardson asbestos trust fund?

No. The company has not filed for bankruptcy and has not established a trust. Claims are pursued as lawsuits and resolved through settlement or verdict, not through a trust claim form.

Why is Mole-Richardson named in mesothelioma lawsuits?

Plaintiffs allege the motion picture cables supplied with its studio and theatrical lighting were insulated with asbestos, and that fixture components contained asbestos as well. Crews handled that cable constantly, in enclosed spaces, over long careers.

What happened in the Stephenson verdict?

A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury returned a unanimous verdict on February 27, 2026 for an 80-year-old Army veteran and longtime Hollywood cameraman, found the company one hundred percent liable, made a finding of malice, and awarded $33,384,400 in non-economic damages after roughly two and a half hours of deliberation.

Who is the defendant if Mole-Richardson still operates in Hollywood?

The case was captioned against PK&P Investment Co., formerly known as Mole-Richardson Co., Ltd., and PK&P Investment Co., formerly known as Mole-Richardson Rentals. Confirm the current structure and correct defendant with counsel, as entity names in this litigation have changed over time.

Which film and stage jobs show up in these cases?

Camera operators and cinematographers, gaffers and best boys, lighting technicians, set electricians, grips, riggers, and stagehands. Exposure was not limited to feature film work. Television, commercials, live theater, concerts, festivals, and civic auditorium work involved the same equipment.

Can I still bring a claim if I worked on set decades ago?

Mesothelioma typically appears twenty to fifty years after exposure, and asbestos limitations periods in most states run from diagnosis rather than exposure. The gap does not by itself bar a claim, but deadlines are strict once diagnosis occurs and vary by state.

What records help prove exposure on a film or stage crew?

Union membership and dispatch records, pension and health plan contribution histories, production credits, call sheets and crew lists, Social Security earnings records, equipment rental documentation, and co-worker testimony.

Does a malice finding mean punitive damages were awarded?

Not necessarily. A malice finding opens the door to a punitive phase under California practice, but the Stephenson case resolved before that phase was completed. The finding reflects the jury's view that the conduct went beyond ordinary negligence.