Asbestos Gasket Trust Claims: Flexitallic, Fel-Pro, and Vellumoid

If you spent years working around gaskets, sealing flanged joints on industrial piping, or pulling apart engines, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the gaskets you handled are very likely part of the story. For most of the twentieth century, the gaskets that sealed high-heat, high-pressure joints were made with asbestos, and three well-known gasket names, Flexitallic, Fel-Pro, and Vellumoid, are now handled through the Federal-Mogul Asbestos Personal Injury Trust.

The danger was in taking the old gasket out. A used gasket bakes onto the flange faces over years of heat, and getting it off means scraping, wire-brushing, and grinding it loose, which turns dried asbestos gasket material into dust right in the worker's breathing zone. Industrial-hygiene testing of that exact task has measured fiber levels hundreds of times today's federal limit.

How these three names are handled differs, and it matters: Flexitallic claims are paid as a paper trust claim, while Fel-Pro and Vellumoid claims are resolved in the court system. You don't need to sort that out, and you don't need old records or the brand off the box. Tracing which gaskets your work history reaches, and which path each one takes, is our job.

What the trust pays for gasket claims

Flexitallic is the trust claim. Flexitallic gasket claims are paid from the Federal-Mogul trust's T&N subfund, on a set schedule, as a paper claim. Mesothelioma sits at the top of that schedule (Level VIII): a scheduled value of $50,000, and up to $150,000 through Individual Review.

Because the gap between scheduled and maximum values is wide, we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted. These are the set values before the subfund's payment percentage is applied, covered below.

Fel-Pro and Vellumoid are a court claim, not a trust schedule. These two don't pay on the schedule above. Their claims are settled or litigated in the court system through the trust, funded by insurance, so a Fel-Pro or Vellumoid claim works more like a lawsuit than a paper trust filing. In practice it's the mesothelioma and other cancer cases that tend to resolve there. We explain that path in our asbestos lawsuit options, and we pursue it alongside any trust claims you have.

How asbestos gaskets exposed workers

A gasket seals the joint between two surfaces, and wherever the joint had to hold against heat and pressure, the gasket was made of asbestos. The work split into two worlds. Flexitallic made the industrial gaskets, including the spiral-wound gasket it pioneered, the asbestos-filled, metal-wound seal used on flanged joints throughout refineries, chemical and power plants, and high-temperature process piping. Fel-Pro and Vellumoid made the engine and automotive gaskets, the head gaskets, manifold gaskets, and seals that mechanics replaced under the hood.

In both worlds, the exposure came from the same place, servicing the joint:

• Removing the old gasket. This was the dusty heart of the job. A spent gasket baked onto the flange faces over years of heat, and getting it off meant scraping, wire-brushing, and grinding the dried asbestos material loose, sending it straight into the air the worker breathed.
• Cutting and fitting new gaskets. Sheet gasket material was cut, trimmed, and sometimes ground to fit, each step shedding fiber.
• Breathing the shop and plant air, and carrying it home. The dust hung in mechanical rooms and shop bays for everyone nearby, and it rode home on work clothes to the families who laundered them.

This reached the trades that lived around gaskets: pipefitters and steamfitters, boilermakers, millwrights, refinery and petrochemical workers, plant maintenance crews, machinists, and the auto and truck mechanics who pulled apart engines. The air-measurement figures for gasket removal live on the product page that owns them.

The Federal-Mogul bankruptcy, and where gasket claims fit

Federal-Mogul was an American auto-parts company that grew by acquisition, and the asbestos liabilities it took on, from the British giant Turner & Newall and from the gasket and brake makers it absorbed, eventually overwhelmed it. In October 2001 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the 2007 reorganization created the Federal-Mogul Asbestos Personal Injury Trust under Section 524(g) of the Bankruptcy Code, the law that routes a company's asbestos claims, present and future, into a trust that takes over the liability. The full mechanics of the trust, including its four subfunds, are on our Federal-Mogul and Turner & Newall hub page.

For gasket claims, the trust splits the three names two ways:

• Flexitallic is part of the T&N subfund, alongside Turner & Newall's insulation and Ferodo's brakes. Its claims are paid on a schedule as paper trust claims, and Flexitallic is in fact the single largest stream of claims in that subfund, a measure of how widely its gaskets were used.
• Fel-Pro and Vellumoid each have their own subfund, but those work differently. Rather than paying on a schedule, they were set up to settle or litigate claims in the court system, funded by insurance through a coverage-in-place arrangement. That makes a Fel-Pro or Vellumoid claim, in practice, a lawsuit-style claim, which we cover with the asbestos lawsuit options.

The operating Federal-Mogul auto-parts business survived the bankruptcy and continues today under later ownership, asbestos-free and unconnected to the old liability. The claims here concern the asbestos gaskets these companies made decades ago, and they're handled by the trust.

What the Flexitallic claim pays, and the payment percentage

The trust offers two filing tracks for Flexitallic claims. Expedited Review pays the fixed scheduled value for your disease level if your claim fits the preset criteria; Individual Review weighs the specifics of your case and can pay up to the higher maximum. Whichever track you file, the subfund pays a percentage of the claim's value rather than the full amount.

For the T&N subfund, which pays Flexitallic claims, that percentage is currently low, at 2.9%.

Run a modest schedule through a low percentage and the per-claim figure for Flexitallic is small. That's not a reason to skip it; it's the reason to make sure every other claim in the case is found and filed, because a Flexitallic claim is meant to be one piece of a larger recovery, not the whole of it. Every asbestos trust pays a percentage so a limited fund lasts across decades for the people not yet diagnosed, and we work from whatever the subfund is paying when your claim is filed, confirmed against the trust's current notice.

Fel-Pro and Vellumoid, again, don't run on a percentage at all; those claims are valued through settlement or litigation in the court system, and we handle them that way.

Is the trust still able to pay?

Yes. The Federal-Mogul trust is large, professionally managed, and paying. Here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $440 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the whole trust held roughly $440 million in net assets available to pay claims, and that balance rose over the year.
• The subfund that pays Flexitallic has paid out hundreds of millions. The T&N subfund, which pays Flexitallic, Turner & Newall, and Ferodo claims, has paid more than $570 million over its life, and Flexitallic is its largest single share of claims.
• It's managing for the long haul. The low payment percentage is how the trust keeps money available for the very large number of claims still to come.

No trust's money is unlimited, and the percentage is exactly how the trust keeps its promise to the people not yet diagnosed. But the Federal-Mogul trust is open, funded, and paying right now, and a Flexitallic claim filed today is paid at the current percentage. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a gasket claim

A claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and documented exposure to a Flexitallic, Fel-Pro, or Vellumoid asbestos product during the period the trust covers.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. The trust pays on Federal-Mogul exposure before December 31, 1982, the heart of the period these gaskets carried asbestos. Most industrial and engine gasket work of that era runs through that window. If your gasket work came later, we'll tell you whether a lawsuit fits instead. We explain the options in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work.

For mesothelioma, you don't need heavy exposure. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that, so a meso claim isn't held to the higher-dose threshold the other disease levels carry. Those levels ask for about six months of Federal-Mogul exposure plus longer cumulative asbestos work, which can add up across different jobs, including time spent working near others doing the dusty work.

You don't need to have known the brand. Credible evidence of gasket exposure, from your account, a coworker's, or a family member's, supported by whatever records exist, is what the claim needs. Few workers tracked which company made the gaskets they pulled decades ago, and the claim doesn't depend on it.

There's also a small, mostly maritime site list. The trust keeps a limited roster of worksites it accepts as places Flexitallic asbestos was present, weighted heavily toward the Navy ships and shipyards where its gaskets sealed shipboard piping. Working at one helps, but it's a narrow route, and most gasket claims are proven by the work you did and the products you worked around, not by a site on a list. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.

Family members can qualify too. If a worker brought the dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household may file on the same exposure history.

A gasket case is rarely a single claim

For a gasket worker's exposure history, this is the part that changes the math.

Nobody worked around just one company's gaskets. A pipefitter, boilermaker, or mechanic broke and remade joints sealed with gaskets from many makers over a career, and a great many of those gasket and packing makers left their own asbestos trusts or are still in business and can be sued directly. On top of that, the same jobs that exposed a worker to gaskets almost always exposed him to packing, insulation, and other asbestos products too, each tracing back to its own maker. The same diagnosis and exposure history that support a Flexitallic claim usually support a stack of others, and because each is resolved on its own, they add up rather than compete.

The Federal-Mogul trust alone can hold more than one claim for a single worker, between Flexitallic gaskets, Ferodo or Abex brakes, and Turner & Newall insulation. That stack is what carries a mesothelioma case, especially where any single percentage is low. We walk through a worked example in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

Sources of compensation beyond the gasket trust claims

A gasket case usually draws on several channels at once, and they run in parallel without canceling one another out.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The Flexitallic claim is a start, and a gasket worker's history almost always reaches other gasket, packing, and insulation trusts. They review and pay independently, so they stack. how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Many gasket and sealing-product makers are still in business and can be sued directly, and the Fel-Pro and Vellumoid claims in this very trust are resolved through the court system. A lawsuit can recover more than a trust claim, though it takes longer. how asbestos lawsuits work.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The refineries, plants, and powerhouses that controlled the worksites can be held responsible for the conditions there, separate from the companies that made the gaskets. how premises liability claims work.
• Federal and disability benefits. Because asbestos gaskets sealed piping aboard ships and in shipyards, this matters here: Navy service can support VA disability benefits, and civilian shipyard work can support Longshore benefits (LHWCA, the federal program for maritime and harbor workers). Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. All are paid on top of the rest. how asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your Flexitallic trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom. The Fel-Pro and Vellumoid claims are the exception, since those run through the court system by design, and the makers still in business and the site owners raise the usual arguments there. None of them is new to us.