ACandS Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked around the asbestos insulation ACandS installed, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

For decades, ACandS was one of the country's largest insulation contractors, sending crews to install and repair asbestos pipe covering, block insulation, insulating cement, and sprayed-on fireproofing at power plants, refineries, factories, and commercial buildings nationwide. It didn't manufacture the materials; it installed other companies' asbestos products, and the work, cutting insulation to fit and ripping out the old, filled job sites with dust. When the asbestos lawsuits came, the trust that resolved them was funded chiefly by the company's insurance, a $449 million settlement with its insurer, together with a contribution from its former parent. That trust has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2009, and it's still open today.

You don't need to have kept your old records, and you don't need to remember which products you worked around or who made them. The trust pays on documented exposure to ACandS asbestos work during the years that count, and it keeps its own nationwide list of the job sites where that work happened. Reconstructing your history and matching it to that list is our job, not yours. If you can tell us where you worked and when, we have a place to start.

What the ACandS trust pays, by disease

Claim values before the payment percentage is applied.

Scheduled is the fixed amount under Expedited Review. Average and maximum are reached through Individual Review, where the trust weighs evidence specific to your case. A dash means no value at that tier: lung cancer 2 has no expedited amount and goes through Individual Review only, and the two non-malignant levels (I and II) pay a set amount with no Individual Review uplift. Your actual payment is the claim value times the trust's current payment percentage, 2.89%, so a maximum mesothelioma claim of $550,000 pays about $15,900. The trust reset that percentage in May 2026 and reviews it periodically

Read these as one trust's share, not your whole recovery. The dollars above are what the ACandS trust pays on its own, and for most people it's one name on a long list. ACandS installed insulation that other companies made, so the same job that exposed you to ACandS asbestos usually exposed you to several manufacturers' products too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. The claims run in parallel without canceling each other out, so the number that matters for your family isn't any single trust's payment, it's the total across all of them, and that's the case we build. Learn more about how asbestos trust claims work.

How ACandS insulation work exposed workers to asbestos

ACandS was one of the largest insulation contractors in the country, and it built its name on asbestos. It didn't manufacture the materials, it installed them: crews went out from offices in around fifty US cities to wrap pipe and block in asbestos insulation, trowel asbestos cement onto fittings, and spray asbestos fireproofing onto the steel frames of buildings. For one product in particular, sprayed Limpet asbestos, ACandS was the exclusive applicator in the United States, the company the manufacturer relied on to put the material up.

That sprayed fireproofing is worth singling out, because of how it was applied. Limpet was a dry mix of asbestos blown through a hose and wetted at the nozzle, then sprayed onto structural steel, and the spraying threw up large clouds of asbestos dust that hung in the air of the building under construction. See how asbestos spray-on fireproofing caused exposure.

The rest of the work shed fiber the same way insulation always did:

• Cutting and fitting pipe covering and block. Sizing asbestos insulation to the pipe and the vessel meant cutting and shaping it, which released fiber every time. See how asbestos pipe and block insulation caused exposure.
• Mixing and troweling insulating cement. The dry asbestos cement was mixed with water and applied by hand to fittings, valves, and elbows, dusty going on and dustier coming off. See how asbestos insulating cement caused exposure.
• Tearing out the old. On repair and replacement work, crews ripped out aged, friable (crumbly and dusty) insulation to get at the pipe, which released far more fiber than putting it up new.

None of this stayed with the ACandS crews alone. They worked at active job sites packed with other trades, so the dust reached everyone in the building. Electricians and pipefitters scraped sprayed fireproofing off the same structural steel to run their lines and conduit, raising it all over again. The insulators doing the work breathed the most of it, but a great many of the people with an ACandS claim never worked for ACandS at all; they just shared a site with its crews.

That's why an ACandS claim reaches across so many trades and settings, from commercial and institutional construction to power plants and refineries. And because the company installed insulation that other manufacturers made, the same exposure usually points to several of those makers too, which is where a single ACandS claim tends to open into many.

How the ACandS bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

By the early 2000s, ACandS was facing a flood of asbestos claims it had no way to pay. In 2002, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of simply closing its doors. Filing didn't erase the claims. It moved them into a process built to handle them all at once.

That process runs on a part of the federal Bankruptcy Code written specifically for asbestos cases, Section 524(g). It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability and issue a channeling injunction, a court order that routes every asbestos claim, the ones already filed and the ones still years from surfacing, into the trust instead of the company. From that point on, the trust pays the claims in the company's place.

Getting there took an unusually long time, for a telling reason. When ACandS first proposed a plan, the court wouldn't approve it, finding it didn't set aside enough for the people who hadn't gotten sick yet, the future claimants whose diseases were still decades from showing up. The plan had to be reworked to protect those future claims before it could go through, and the trust wasn't seated until 2008, about six years after the filing. The same principle that slowed the process down is the one that governs how the trust pays today, the duty to hold enough back for everyone still to come.

The trust was funded chiefly by the company's insurance, a settlement of roughly $449 million with its insurer, together with a contribution from its former parent and the remaining value of the company. It began accepting claims in 2009 and is still open. That trust is what you file against today; the company itself can no longer be sued for the asbestos at issue.

The company's work outlived the bankruptcy, even if the company didn't. ACandS isn't a going business anymore. Before it filed, it had already moved its insulation-contracting operations to its former parent company, leaving behind essentially a shell whose purpose was to fund the trust, so there's no operating company still trading under the ACandS name. The contracting work it had done, and many of the people who did it, carried on under that former parent, a separate business. Two things follow for your claim. The records and the nationwide site list behind your exposure still exist, so the history can be reconstructed. And because the trust, funded by insurance and the company's residual value, is what pays these claims, filing yours takes nothing from any working business or the people it employs.

What the ACandS trust pays, and why it's a percentage

The trust pays set amounts based on your diagnosis, scaled to how serious the disease is, with mesothelioma at the top of the schedule and the non-malignant conditions like asbestosis lower down. The full breakdown by disease is in the table near the top of this page.

How you file decides which of those amounts is within reach, because the trust offers two tracks:

• Expedited Review is the fast track. If your diagnosis and exposure fit the trust's preset criteria, the claim is paid the fixed scheduled value (the trust's set amount) for your disease level, with no negotiation and a quicker turnaround. It's the simplest path when the standard amount is the right amount.
• Individual Review is the evidence-based track. Instead of the fixed figure, the trust weighs the specifics of your case, your age, your work history, your dependents, and the strength of the exposure proof, and it can pay up to the much higher maximum value. It takes longer and asks for more, but for a serious diagnosis it's usually worth it. For mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because the gap between the scheduled and the maximum value is large enough to matter to your family.

Whichever track you file, the trust doesn't pay the full value of the claim. It pays a percentage of it, currently 2.89%, a few cents on each dollar of a claim's value.

That number surprises people, so here's why it's there. It's the same principle behind every bankruptcy: when a company can't cover everything it owes, the law shares what there is across everyone it harmed, so that everyone gets a fair portion instead of a lucky few collecting in full and everyone else collecting nothing. An asbestos trust has to do that across time as well, because these diseases can take thirty to fifty years to surface, so the trust has to hold back enough for the family that won't be diagnosed until 2045. This is the very thing the bankruptcy court insisted on before it would approve the plan, and it's still the rule that governs every payment.

One thing the percentage hides is worth saying plainly. Because this trust sets its underlying claim values higher than many do, a low-looking percentage still lands its actual mesothelioma payment close to what other asbestos trusts pay for the same disease. The percentage and the claim value only mean something together, so the headline percentage is a poor way to judge what a claim is worth, here or anywhere. What matters is the dollars at the end, and those come from the value and the percentage multiplied together.

The percentage isn't fixed forever. The trust reset it in 2026 and reviews it periodically, so it can move up or down over time. We work from whatever the trust is paying when your claim is filed, and we confirm it against the trust's current notice rather than any figure that might be out of date.

Is the ACandS trust still able to pay?

Yes. A trust that pays a small percentage can leave people wondering whether there's much left, so here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $123 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $123 million in net assets, what its accounts call net claimants' equity, the money set aside to pay claims.
• About $10.7 million paid in 2025. In that single year the trust paid out close to $11 million to claimants across roughly 15,000 claims.
• It barely touched principal to do it. The trust's investment returns covered the claims it paid and nearly all of its running costs, so its assets dipped by less than one percent over the year rather than being drawn down hard. It's paying steadily while staying close to self-sustaining.

None of that means the money is unlimited, and it's exactly why the trust pays a set percentage rather than the full value of each claim: it's holding reserves against a long line of claims still to come, the future claimants the bankruptcy court was so concerned to protect. But the trust is open, funded, and paying right now, and a claim filed today is paid on the current schedule.

Who qualifies for an ACandS trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to ACandS asbestos work during the period the trust covers. The diagnosis side is medical. The exposure side is where the trust's specific rules come in, and where most of our work happens.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. Like most asbestos trusts, the ACandS trust pays on exposure from before December 31, 1982. The reasoning traces back to when the danger became widely known and warnings went up, and we lay out that full logic, along with your options if your exposure came later, in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. For ACandS, the work that exposed people was concentrated well before that date, so the cutoff is rarely the obstacle people fear.

For mesothelioma, you don't need heavy exposure. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that, so a meso claim doesn't have to meet the higher dose threshold that applies to some other diseases. That threshold, Significant Occupational Exposure (SOE), is about five years of total asbestos exposure with at least two of those years before the end of 1982. It applies to the other cancers and to the more serious asbestosis claims, where the higher-paying severe level depends on how much lung function you've lost, measured by a breathing test (a pulmonary function test); the base asbestosis and pleural-disease levels pay their set amounts without it. Two things about SOE matter especially for ACandS work. It can add up across different jobs and employers, so no single position has to carry the whole five years. And it counts regular work in close proximity to asbestos work, not just hands-on handling, so a tradesman who spent years working alongside insulation crews can meet the threshold without ever having touched the material himself. Learn more about how asbestos trust claims work.

Family members can qualify too. If an ACandS worker, or a tradesman who shared those sites, brought the dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household can file on the worker's exposure history, the same history that supports the worker's own claim. Learn more about take-home or secondary asbestos exposure.

If you worked for ACandS itself, your own situation needs a closer look. For most asbestos at work, an employee's remedy against their own employer runs through workers' compensation, which can limit or bar a separate claim against that employer's trust. For an ACandS crew member, that rule can affect the claim against the ACandS trust specifically. It usually doesn't end the matter, though, because it reaches only your own employer. The claims against the companies that made the insulation and fireproofing you installed, the manufacturers' trusts and lawsuits this page describes, along with any premises claims and any take-home exposure in your family, are separate and generally unaffected. This is a place where the details of your work history really do change the answer, so it's worth a call rather than a guess.

How the ACandS trust's approved site list works

The ACandS trust keeps a nationwide list of the job sites where the company is known to have done asbestos work, more than 1,400 of them across 44 states and the District of Columbia. Finding your worksite on it matters, because ACandS was the contractor doing the insulation work there, so the list places its asbestos work where you were. But that's the starting point of a claim, not the whole of it.

Being at a site where ACandS worked isn't the same as being exposed to the dust that work created. The trust asks both questions: whether ACandS's asbestos work was present, and whether what you did there would have put that fiber in your air. So we look at what you actually did, and at the ACandS crews working around you. ACandS installed and stripped asbestos insulation, and that work released fiber when covering was cut and fitted and, most of all, when old, heat-degraded insulation was torn out, turning friable (crumbly and dusty) material into airborne dust. Whether you were on an ACandS crew doing that work or one of the other trades sharing the building while they did, we use the exposure record on asbestos pipe covering, block, and spray insulation, together with your work history, to connect your tasks to that exposure. The list puts ACandS's work at your site; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

The list isn't the whole story either, and this is where people wrongly count themselves out. ACandS sent crews out of offices in around fifty cities over several decades, and no list compiled long after the fact captures every job; a building where ACandS installed or stripped insulation may not appear, or may be recorded under an owner or a name that has since changed. Not being on the list doesn't disqualify you; it means the claim goes through Individual Review, where we document the exposure with work history, building and contract records, and coworkers' accounts rather than relying on the list alone. We check the list first, but we don't stop there. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.

How an ACandS claim gets filed

A trust claim isn't a lawsuit, and that surprises people who expect a courtroom. There's no judge, no jury, no deposition, and no defense lawyer arguing the other side. You're not suing anyone. You're submitting a documented claim to a fund that already exists to pay it, and the trust reviews it against its written rules and pays on its schedule.

What the claim needs is proof of two things: your diagnosis, and your exposure to ACandS asbestos work during the covered period. Putting that together is our job, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, match it against the trust's approved site list and its records, and choose the track, Expedited or Individual Review, that fits your situation. You don't need to have kept paperwork or remember the names of the products or the people you worked beside to start.

The ACandS trust has been open and paying since 2009 and is still accepting claims today, so the door isn't closed. The fuller mechanics of how trust claims are prepared, filed, and paid are laid out in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. When you call, we'll tell you what your specific claim is likely to involve and how the timeline tends to run.

An ACandS claim is rarely the only one

Here's the part that changes the math for most families: the ACandS trust is usually one claim out of several, and with this company the reason is built right into what it did.

ACandS didn't make asbestos, it installed it, and the insulation and fireproofing its crews put up were manufactured by other companies. So the very products that exposed you on an ACandS job, the pipe covering, the block, the cement, the sprayed fireproofing, were other makers' asbestos. A number of those manufacturers went bankrupt too, and each one left its own trust. The same exposure that grounds your ACandS claim, in other words, usually points straight at several other trusts at the same time, because the material in the air came from them.

Now stretch that across a career. A working life around insulation meant different sites, different buildings, and different products, every one of them adding manufacturers and trusts to the list. The same history that supports your ACandS claim usually supports a stack of others, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims don't compete with each other. They add up.

This is why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. Each trust pays its own fraction, and most pay modestly on their own, but a work history that turns up many trusts instead of a few can change the total on a mesothelioma claim by a wide margin. We walk through a full worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

Even stacked across many trusts, trust claims are still only one part of an ACandS recovery, and some of the other parts can be larger. The full set of channels, including the lawsuits and benefits that run alongside the trusts, is laid out in the recovery options on this page.

Sources of compensation beyond the ACandS trust

An ACandS claim usually sits inside a larger recovery, and the channels run in parallel without canceling one another out. We file across all of them that apply.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. ACandS is one, and the insulation it installed was made by other companies, several of which left their own trusts. They review and pay independently, so they stack. Learn more about how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. The makers of the insulation and fireproofing products installed at your sites that are still in business can be sued directly for selling a product they knew was dangerous, and a lawsuit can recover more than a trust claim, though it takes longer. Learn more about asbestos product liability lawsuits.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The plants, power stations, and building owners where ACandS crews worked can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed on site, separate from the companies that made the products. Learn more about premises liability lawsuits.
• Federal and disability benefits. These depend on where and how the work was done, and they're paid on top of the trust and lawsuit recovery. Civilian work at a federal facility can support FECA benefits (the Federal Employees' Compensation Act); work on a military base can support VA disability benefits; and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. Learn about asbestos disability and benefit claims.

Your ACandS trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom, no one arguing the other side. ACandS settled that question when the trust was funded, and the trust either pays the claim or it doesn't, on its written rules.

Defenses only come up on the lawsuit side, the claims that run alongside the trust against the companies that made the products installed at your sites and the owners of the sites themselves. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, and none of them is new to us. The short version is that each one describes a cleaner, smaller version of the work than the one your loved one actually did, and the evidence answers it.