Proposed CARD Clinic sale on hold

While many wait on U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen’s rulings regarding Libby’s shuttered CARD 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, 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 the 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 the 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.

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

The 2023 ruling was ordered by Christensen after a seven-person jury found the Center for Asbestos Related Disease submitted 337 false claims to the federal government. 

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 CARD Executive Director Tracy McNew, prior to trial, Judge 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 a 12-day trial that ended in late June 2023.

Two years later, clinic officials are fighting for its future after it was closed on Wednesday, May 7, when the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office served a Writ of Execution on the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, Inc. to satisfy the judgment against the clinic.

Since then, the clinic has moved its operations to 118 West 3rd St. in Libby. They are 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 rail yards 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 actively transported vermiculite from the mine in Libby, Montana 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, Inc. acquired BNSF in 2010. On Feb. 12, 2024, the company celebrated 175 years.

The CARD Clinic is also facing a wrongful death and medical malpractice suit filed Oct. 10, 2024, in Lincoln County District Court, 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 CARD patient at the time of his death Jan. 12, 2015. Matilas is listed as a former CARD patient. 

The civil suit accuses Dr. Charles Brad Black and the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, including Executive Director Tracy McNew, of medical malpractice. 

The court filing also argues CARD 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 CARD providers.  

That suit is still pending.