While many wait on U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen’s rulings on Libby’s shuttered asbestos clinic, new court filings indicate the July 2 sheriff’s sale will be put on hold.

Due to state law requirements, Lincoln County Sheriff Darren Short signed a notice June 5 giving notice to the sheriff's sale. The proceeds from the proposed sale would go to satisfying the $3.1 million judgment for the plaintiff, BNSF Railway, with interest and costs.

According to Montana code, the Sheriff's Office has 120 days from the day it received the writ to conduct the sale. The sale would include Center for Asbestos Related Disease's real property as well as office equipment, furnishings, other machinery, fixtures and equipment. 

Railway attorneys from the Missoula firm of Knight, Nicastro and MacKay were ordered by Christensen at the end of a June 12 hearing to enter a representation into the case record the sale wouldn’t go forward until he ruled on the pending motions and a debtor’s exam hearing was held.

Christensen heard a number of arguments June 12 from attorneys for the nonprofit clinic, the U.S. government and BNSF as the railroad seeks to collect money on the judgment it won against the clinic in 2023.

The 2023 ruling was ordered by Christensen after a seven-person jury found the clinic submitted 337 false claims to the federal government following a 12-day trial that same year. 

Most of the claims at issue in the trial concerned the submission of EHH forms to Medicare, which certified that patients had been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease and were eligible for coverage under an Affordable Care Act provision created to respond to Libby’s environmental health threat. 

According to clinic Executive Director Tracy McNew, prior to trial, Christensen made a legal ruling that any claim based only on an imaging read by an outside “B-reader” radiologist was invalid, making it likely that those certifications constituted a bulk of the 337 claims.

Christensen oversaw the 2023 trial.

Two years later, clinic officials are fighting for its future after it was closed on May 7. That's when the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office served a writ of execution on the clinic to satisfy the judgment.

Since then, the clinic has moved its operations to 118 W. Third St. in Libby. It is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Wednesday.

In 2011, CARD was chosen by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry for a four-year grant for a screening program for environmental health hazards, including asbestosis, pleural thickening and pleural plaques, caused by exposure to hazardous substances at Libby’s Superfund sites. The federal grants continued with the most recent reward in September 2024. It is scheduled to run through August 2029.

BNSF has been sued multiple times with plaintiffs alleging its hauling of vermiculite contaminated with asbestos or failure to clean up railyards resulted in death and health problems for those who were exposed.

According to www.asbestos.com, BNSF was Burlington Northern at the time it was transporting vermiculite in Libby. The company became BN in 1970 when four major U.S. railways merged: Great Northern Railway; Northern Pacific Railway; The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; and Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. 

Burlington Northern transported vermiculite from the mine in Libby for decades. The mine closed in 1990.

BN merged with the Santa Fe in 1995, forming BNSF Railway. The company is the largest rail network in the country.

Investor and businessman Warren Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway acquired BNSF in 2010. On Feb. 12, 2024, the company celebrated 175 years in business.

The asbestos clinic in Libby is also facing a wrongful death and medical malpractice suit filed in October 2024 in Lincoln County District Court. It alleges medical malpractice, wrongful death and claims of disabling Lincoln County residents by prescribing them opioid pain killers following the misdiagnosis of health issues. 

The plaintiffs are Thomas Steiger, the personal representative of the estate of Terry L. Steiger, and Thomas J. Matilas, a Libby resident. According to the suit, Steiger, a Troy resident, was a clinic patient at the time of his death Jan. 12, 2015. Matilas is listed as a former clinic patient. 

The civil suit accuses Dr. Charles Brad Black and the clinic, including McNew, of medical malpractice. 

The court filing also argues the clinic knew or should have known both men didn’t satisfy diagnostic requirements for asbestos-related disease and should not have been giving opioid pain medications in the manner prescribed by the clinic's providers.  

That suit is still pending.