Fibreboard Asbestos Trust Claims

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

For most of the twentieth century, Fibreboard Corporation was one of the West's major building-materials makers, and its Pabco line of high-temperature asbestos insulation, including the Caltemp and Caltherm products, which used amosite (a more hazardous type of asbestos), wrapped the steam lines, boilers, and process piping in factories, refineries, power plants, and ships, and reached still more workers under other companies' brand names. The weight of asbestos sickness it caused was eventually resolved through a trust, part of the same Owens Corning/Fibreboard bankruptcy trust that pays Owens Corning's claims, but with its own separate funding and its own schedule for Fibreboard's products. That trust has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2006, and it's still open and still paying.

You don't need to have kept your old records, and you don't need to have known the insulation was Pabco or Caltemp or that Fibreboard made it. The trust pays on documented exposure to Fibreboard asbestos products, and reconstructing that, from work history, military records, and the trust's own documentation, is our job, not yours. If you can tell us where you worked and when, we have a place to start.

What the Fibreboard trust pays by disease level

This page covers claims for Fibreboard products, which the trust pays from its Fibreboard sub-account on the schedule below. Mesothelioma sits at the top, at Level VIII, with a scheduled value (the trust's preset amount) of $135,000 and a maximum value of $450,000. That gap is the whole reason the filing track matters: for mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because Individual Review is what opens the higher figure your evidence can support. Every amount below is then reduced by the trust's payment percentage, explained further down the page.

A dash in the scheduled column (Lung cancer 2, Level VI) means that level has no fixed fast-track amount; it's paid through review against the average and maximum instead. A dash in the average and maximum columns (Level I) means that level is a small flat cash-discount payment with no higher tier above it.

These are one sub-account's values, not your family's whole recovery. The amounts above are what the Fibreboard sub-account assigns to each disease before its payment percentage comes off, and almost everyone exposed to Fibreboard asbestos was exposed to other companies' products too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. What the Fibreboard claim is worth on its own matters far less than what the whole set of claims comes to, and we come back to that below.

How Fibreboard's Pabco, Caltemp, and Caltherm insulation exposed workers

Fibreboard Corporation was one of the major building-materials makers of the West, and from 1928 on its asbestos insulation carried the Pabco name. For decades Pabco high-temperature insulation wrapped the steam lines, boilers, and process piping in factories, refineries, power plants, and ships, sold first as a "Precision Molded" 85% magnesia pipe and block insulation, and later, increasingly, as the two products that replaced it: Caltemp and Caltherm.

Those last two matter most, and not only because they became Fibreboard's biggest sellers. The asbestos in Caltemp and Caltherm was amosite, an amphibole (the more hazardous family of asbestos fiber), rather than the more common chrysotile, and an exposure history built on amphibole fiber is part of why a Fibreboard claim carries the weight it does.

None of it released much fiber sitting still. It got into the air when the insulation was worked: sawing and cutting the pipe covering to length, fitting block to a boiler, and especially tearing out old, friable (crumbly and dusty) insulation to reach the equipment underneath during repairs. The men doing that breathed it directly, and so did everyone working near them, because the dust filled the whole space. See how asbestos pipe and block insulation caused exposure.

Here's the part many workers never knew. Fibreboard's insulation didn't only reach them under the Pabco, Caltemp, and Caltherm names. Fibreboard was also a manufacturer for other companies, making insulation that was then sold under their brands: Kaylo for Owens Corning, LK Insulation for ACandS, and Pyrocal for PPG. So a worker who only ever knew one of those names may have been handling a Fibreboard-made product, which is one more reason you don't need to have known the Fibreboard name to have a Fibreboard claim.

That's why a Fibreboard claim reaches across the trades that worked around insulation: the insulators who installed and removed it, the pipefitters and plumbers who ran the lines it covered, the boilermakers who built and repaired the boilers it wrapped, and the Navy sailors and shipyard workers who lived alongside it. That spread is the first sign of why a Fibreboard claim is rarely the only one.

How the Fibreboard bankruptcy created the asbestos trust, and where the company is today

By the late 1990s, the asbestos liability from Fibreboard's insulation was being litigated alongside the rest of the industry's. Owens Corning had acquired Fibreboard in 1997, and when Owens Corning filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2000, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of shutting down, Fibreboard's asbestos liability was resolved in the same case. 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 bankruptcy law written specifically for asbestos cases, Section 524(g). It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability, then issue a channeling injunction, a court order that routes every asbestos claim, the ones already filed and the ones that haven't happened yet, away from the company and into the trust. From that point on, the trust pays the claims in the company's place. The trade the law strikes is straightforward: the trust is funded up front, and in return the company is protected from being sued over that asbestos again.

When the plan was confirmed in 2006, the resulting trust, the Owens Corning/Fibreboard Asbestos Personal Injury Trust, was set up with two separate sub-accounts, one for Owens Corning's products and one for Fibreboard's, each with its own funding and its own value schedule. That structure is why Fibreboard claims have their own dedicated pool of money and their own schedule, which this page describes, rather than competing with Owens Corning's claims for the same funds. That trust is what you file against today.

The company itself is gone, but it was absorbed by one that's still in business. Fibreboard no longer operates as an independent company; Owens Corning acquired it in 1997, and Fibreboard's asbestos liability is now handled entirely by the Fibreboard sub-account of the trust. The company that absorbed it, Owens Corning, is a large, successful public company today (NYSE: OC), headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. That matters for two reasons. It means the records and history behind Fibreboard's products still exist, kept by the company that took it over. And because the trust, not any operating business, pays these claims, filing yours doesn't take a dollar from anyone working today, and the funding for Fibreboard claims was settled long ago.

Why the Fibreboard trust pays a percentage, not the full amount

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 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 3.5%, about three and a half 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. Paying a set fraction of each claim is what lets the trust keep that promise to everyone in line.

A percentage this size is exactly why the rest of your claim matters so much, and it's worth being plain about that. Any single trust pays only its own fraction, and on its own that fraction is modest. What changes the picture for a family is the full set of claims a single exposure history can support, which for Fibreboard is often a long one, and that's what we build. The percentage isn't fixed forever; the trust reviews it over time, and on June 30, 2026 it was reduced from 3.7% to 3.5%. We work from whatever it's paying when your claim is filed and confirm it against the trust's current notice rather than any figure that might be out of date.

Is the Fibreboard trust still able to pay?

Yes. A trust that pays a percentage of each claim can leave people wondering whether there's anything left, so here's the picture for the Fibreboard sub-account from the most recent annual report.

• About $260 million set aside for Fibreboard claims. The trust keeps a separate Fibreboard sub-account, and at the end of 2025 it held roughly $260 million in net assets, money dedicated to Fibreboard claims and not shared with Owens Corning's. That's down only slightly from about $263 million a year earlier.
• Nearly $19 million paid on Fibreboard claims in 2025. In that single year the sub-account paid out close to $19 million on Fibreboard claims.
• A dedicated pool, drawing down slowly. The sub-account spent only a few million dollars more than its investments earned back over the year, so its balance held nearly steady, which is the fund doing its job rather than running short.

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. But the Fibreboard sub-account is funded and paying right now, and a claim filed today is paid on the current schedule. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a Fibreboard trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to Fibreboard asbestos 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 Fibreboard 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 Fibreboard, the practical point is that most careers around its insulation ran straight through that window, so the date 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 1982 cutoff. It applies to lung cancer and other cancers, and to the more serious asbestosis claims: 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. SOE can add up across different employers, and it can come from working near the dust, not only from handling the material yourself.

Family members can qualify too. If a Fibreboard worker 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. how take-home asbestos exposure works.

How the trust's site list and product identification work

The trust recognizes that Fibreboard's asbestos was present two ways, and you only need one of them. The first is the trust's approved site list, more than 8,500 worksites across 49 states and the District of Columbia that it already accepts as places where Fibreboard asbestos was present. If you worked at a listed site during the covered period, that part is straightforward.

The second is product identification: proof that you worked around a Fibreboard product, even at a site the list never names. This matters more than usual for Fibreboard, because its insulation traveled under several names, its own and the brands it made for other companies, so the product, not just the brand you remember, is what we trace. A coworker's account, a purchase or specification record, or the kind of work you did and where can establish it.

But proving Fibreboard's product was at your worksite, by either door, isn't the same as being exposed to it, and the trust asks both questions: whether Fibreboard asbestos was present, and whether the work you did would have put its fiber in your air. So we look at what you actually did. Sawing and cutting the pipe covering to fit, shaping block to a boiler, and tearing out old, friable (crumbly and dusty) insulation during repairs all released fiber, and we use the exposure record on asbestos pipe and block insulation, together with your work history, to connect your tasks to exposure from Fibreboard's product. The site list or the product ID puts Fibreboard at your worksite; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

Not finding your site on a list is a reason to look closer, not to give up. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.

How a Fibreboard 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 Fibreboard asbestos 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 or document the Fibreboard products you worked around, including the ones sold under other names, and choose the track, Expedited or Individual Review, that fits your situation. You don't need to have kept paperwork or remember product names to start.

The Fibreboard trust has been open and paying since 2006 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.

A Fibreboard claim is rarely the only one

Here's the part that changes the math for most families: the Fibreboard trust is usually one claim out of several, and the others come from the very same work.

The rebranding is the clearest reason. Because Fibreboard manufactured insulation that was sold under other companies' names, one insulation history can connect to several trusts at once. The Kaylo that Fibreboard made was sold by Owens Corning, whose own trust pays Kaylo claims, so the Owens Corning asbestos trust is often in the picture alongside Fibreboard's. The LK Insulation it made was sold by ACandS, which left the ACandS asbestos trust. And Fibreboard made Pyrocal, which PPG sold; there's no PPG asbestos trust, but because the product was Fibreboard's, identifying the maker behind the brand is exactly what opens the door. The lesson is the same in every direction: the name on the box doesn't settle which claims you have, and we trace each product back to who actually made it.

Now stretch that across a career. A working life around insulation meant a working life around many manufacturers' asbestos, the pipe covering from one maker, the block from another, the gaskets and packing on the same equipment from still others, job after job and year after year. Many of those makers went bankrupt too, and each one left its own trust. The same work history that supports your Fibreboard 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 eight trusts instead of three 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 a Fibreboard recovery, and some of the other parts can be larger, including a lawsuit against a still-solvent company like PPG for the Pyrocal it sold. The full set of channels is laid out in the recovery options on this page.

Sources of compensation beyond the Fibreboard trust

A Fibreboard 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. The Fibreboard trust is one, and a career around insulation almost always reaches several others, including the makers of the products sold under other names and the other products on the same equipment. They review and pay independently, so they stack. how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. Some are still in business and can be sued directly for selling a product they knew was dangerous, including a company like PPG for the Pyrocal insulation it sold, and a lawsuit can recover more than a trust claim, though it takes longer. how asbestos product liability lawsuits work.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The shipyards, power plants, refineries, and plants where Fibreboard insulation was installed and torn out can be held responsible for the conditions in their boiler and engine rooms, separate from the companies that made the products. how premises liability claims work.
• 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. Navy service can support VA disability benefits; civilian shipyard work can support Longshore benefits (LHWCA, the federal program for maritime and harbor workers); civilian work at a federal facility can support FECA benefits (the Federal Employees' Compensation Act); and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. how asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your Fibreboard 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. The liability was settled 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 manufacturers still in business and the site owners where you worked. 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.