Navy and Veteran Asbestos Claims Reading

Michael Schafle, Esq. provides Navy And Veteran Asbestos Claims in Reading, PA.

The Navy is the single most asbestos-exposed branch of the U.S.

military. From the 1930s through the early 1980s, asbestos lined boiler rooms, engine rooms, pipe lagging, pumps, valves, and gaskets on nearly every vessel, and sailors in engineering and "fire room" ratings breathed it daily in sealed below-deck spaces. The VA recognizes asbestos as a hazardous service exposure, and mesothelioma is treated as a presumptive, service-connected disease, meaning a Navy veteran usually does not have to prove where the fibers came from, only that they served and now carry the diagnosis.

Two separate recoveries exist, and a veteran in Reading is entitled to pursue both.

The first is VA disability compensation: mesothelioma is commonly rated at 100%, and a surviving spouse may qualify for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) after a service-connected death. The second is a civil claim against the private manufacturers that supplied the asbestos materials, not against the Navy or the government. Many of those companies set up court-supervised asbestos bankruptcy trusts, which the federal courts oversee, and a trust claim can be filed even when the original company no longer trades.

A veteran who served at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard or shipped out from a nearby base, then retired to Pennside, Northmont, or Mount Penn, often qualifies for all three at once.

Step 1 is confirming service with the DD-214 and locating ship assignments and muster rolls through the National Archives military personnel records. Step 2 is the medical link, the diagnosis paperwork and treating-physician records. Step 3 files the VA presumptive claim.

Step 4 identifies the specific products and manufacturers aboard the named vessels to build the civil and trust claims. Step 5 tracks each deadline so nothing lapses while the family focuses on treatment. We carry every one of those steps so a sailor's widow in Glenside or Wyomissing Hills is never filling out federal forms alone.

Decision-fit is straightforward.

A living veteran with a fresh diagnosis should open the VA claim first because presumptive service connection moves fastest and brings monthly income during treatment. A surviving family should move on DIC and the civil/trust claims together, since Pennsylvania's civil deadline is measured from the date of death, not the date of service decades earlier. If the exposure was partly civilian, a plant job in Millmont or the 18th Ward after discharge, the civil claim widens to include those employers too, which is why both tracks are built side by side rather than one at a time.