Flintkote Asbestos Trust Claims

If you worked with Flintkote roofing, siding, floor tile, joint compound, or cement, or if someone in your family did, and a mesothelioma or other asbestos diagnosis has now come in, the company left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

For most of the twentieth century, Flintkote was one of the country's big building-products companies, and from the 1930s into the early 1980s a great deal of what it made carried asbestos: asphalt and asbestos-cement roofing, siding, floor tile, joint compound, pipe, and board, sold to job sites in nearly every state. The company even mined its own asbestos for a time, from a chrysotile mine in Quebec. The volume of asbestos sickness eventually drove Flintkote and its mining subsidiary into bankruptcy in 2004, and its reorganization set up a trust, funded with more than $700 million, that's been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2015. That trust is large, well funded, and still paying.

You don't need to have kept records, and you don't need to remember which Flintkote product you worked around or which job it was on. The trust keeps a long list of the worksites where its products were used, and it also accepts sworn statements, coworker accounts, and work records to document exposure, so reconstructing that is our job, not yours. If you can tell us the work you did and where, we have a place to start.

What the Flintkote trust pays

For mesothelioma, the Flintkote trust's scheduled value is $184,000, and a claim taken through Individual Review can reach as high as $450,000. Those are the trust's full values, before its payment percentage is applied, which we explain further down. Mesothelioma sits at the top of the trust's seven-level schedule:

Lung cancer 2 (Level V) has no fixed scheduled value, shown above as an em-dash; a claim at that level is handled through Individual Review rather than the fast track. The two lowest levels cover milder asbestosis and pleural disease at small set amounts. As with most trusts, mesothelioma's maximum value sits far above its scheduled value, which is why a serious claim is usually worth the closer Individual Review look.

Two things to keep in mind reading that table. First, every figure is reduced by the trust's payment percentage before it reaches you, which is how the fund lasts for the people still to be diagnosed; we explain that below. Second, Flintkote products were rarely the only asbestos a construction or building-trades worker handled, so the same career usually supports claims against other trusts and defendants too. For many people the Flintkote claim is one piece of a larger recovery.

How Flintkote's products exposed workers to asbestos

Flintkote made building materials. The company started in 1901 as a roofing manufacturer, best known for its asphalt shingles, and over the decades it grew into one of the country's large building-products companies, with scores of plants turning out roofing, siding, floor tile, joint compound, cement board and pipe, and more. From the 1930s into the early 1980s, a great many of those products were made with asbestos, mostly chrysotile, which added strength and fire resistance. For part of that time Flintkote even mined its own fiber, through a subsidiary that ran a chrysotile mine in Quebec from the 1940s until 1971.

Products like these don't release much fiber sitting installed and intact. They got into the air when the people who used them worked them: sawing and snapping asbestos-cement siding and pipe, drilling and cutting floor tile, sanding joint compound smooth, and above all tearing the old material out during repairs and renovation years later. The work was done by hand, without warnings or protection, and the dust didn't stay with the person making it.

Because Flintkote's products were used across construction, the people who breathed their fiber spanned many trades: the roofers who laid and stripped the shingles, the floor and tile installers who cut the tile, the insulators and pipefitters and plumbers who worked around the cement pipe and board, the drywall finishers who sanded the joint compound, and the construction and demolition crews who put buildings up and took them down. Flintkote's own plant workers, and the miners at its Quebec operation, were exposed most directly of all.

A Flintkote claim is also rarely a claim about Flintkote alone. A building-trades career meant a job site full of other companies' asbestos, and the same work that exposed a worker to Flintkote products usually exposed him to many others. We come back to that below, because it's where much of the recovery is.

How the Flintkote bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

By the early 2000s, Flintkote had spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars resolving asbestos claims, and when its insurance coverage faltered, the litigation overtook it. In 2004, The Flintkote Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of simply liquidating, and its asbestos-mining subsidiary, Flintkote Mines Limited, filed soon after; the two cases were handled together.

Flintkote's reorganization runs on a part of the bankruptcy law written specifically for asbestos, 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 to surface, away from the company and into the trust. The trade is straightforward: the company funds the trust, and in return it's protected from being sued over asbestos again. Flintkote's case was an unusually long one, tied up for years in disputes that delayed it, but the plan was finally confirmed and the trust took effect in 2015. It was funded on a scale that matches Flintkote's long litigation history: more than $700 million in all, the largest piece of it a $460 million settlement that resolved long-running litigation tied to Flintkote's former ownership, together with a settlement fund the company had built up earlier in the case. That funding is part of why Flintkote is one of the larger asbestos trusts still paying today.

The operating company is gone. Unlike some asbestos defendants that reorganized and kept running, Flintkote as a building-products business is no longer around; it sold off its manufacturing divisions back in the 1980s and exists today only in connection with winding up its asbestos liability. What that means for you is simple and reassuring: there's no live company whose workers or finances your claim could touch. The trust is what remains, it was funded specifically to pay these claims, and the records behind the exposures, the worksite lists and product histories, were preserved as part of building it.

What the Flintkote 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 milder non-malignant conditions 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.
• Individual Review is the evidence-based track. Instead of the fixed figure, the trust weighs the specifics of your case and can pay up to the much higher maximum value. It asks for more and takes longer, 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, $184,000 against $450,000, 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 15%, or fifteen 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 everyone gets a fair portion instead of a lucky few collecting in full and everyone else getting 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 holds back enough for the family that won't be diagnosed until 2045.

The encouraging part of Flintkote's percentage is that it has been going up. In late 2023 the trust raised its rate from 11% to 15%, a meaningful increase that means a claim filed now is worth more than the same claim would have been a couple of years ago. A trust that can raise its percentage is the opposite of a fund struggling to stretch what's left. The rate can still move on review, so we confirm it against the trust's current notice when your claim is filed rather than relying on a figure that might be out of date.

Is the Flintkote trust still able to pay?

Yes, and comfortably. This is one of the larger and healthier asbestos trusts, and here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• More than $520 million on hand. A decade after it opened, the trust still holds over half a billion dollars in net assets. It was funded with more than $700 million and has paid hundreds of millions in claims since 2015, and what remains is a large, actively managed fund.
• A rising percentage. The trust raised what it pays from 11% to 15% in late 2023, which is the mark of a fund in good shape, not one running dry.
• Still paying tens of millions a year. In 2025 alone the trust paid out nearly $40 million across more than 13,000 claims, and that year its investment returns ran ahead of what it paid, so the fund edged up rather than down.

None of that means the money is unlimited, and the percentage is exactly how the trust keeps its promise to the people who haven't gotten sick yet. But a Flintkote claim filed today is paid on a current, well-funded schedule, and we track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a Flintkote trust claim

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

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. The Flintkote trust pays on asbestos 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. Most careers around these products 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: a meso claim asks for credible exposure to Flintkote asbestos before 12/31/1982 and nothing more, and doesn't have to clear the higher dose threshold that applies to the other diseases. That threshold, Significant Occupational Exposure (SOE), is about five years of total asbestos work with at least two of those years before 12/31/1982, and it applies to lung cancer, the other cancers, and the more serious asbestosis claims. Importantly, SOE counts work done near the dust, not only handling the material yourself, so a tradesman who worked alongside the people cutting Flintkote products qualifies on the same footing.

The trust pays milder disease too, at lower amounts. Unlike some trusts, Flintkote has levels for milder asbestosis and pleural disease, paid at small set amounts, in addition to the severe-asbestosis and cancer levels. They're modest, but they're there, and they can be worth filing alongside other claims.

The trust won't pay on a name alone. Its rules are explicit that a claim has to rest on real exposure to an actual Flintkote product, not on the bare fact that the company was once named in asbestos litigation. For anyone who worked around these materials, that's a low bar, and documenting it is what we do.

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

How the trust's approved worksites and exposure proof work

Flintkote sold its products to job sites across the country, and the trust built a long list, more than 1,400 worksites across 44 states and the District of Columbia, that it already accepts as places where Flintkote asbestos was present. If you worked at one of those sites during the covered period, that part is straightforward.

Being at a listed site isn't the same as being exposed to Flintkote's product there, though, and the trust asks both questions: whether Flintkote 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. Flintkote's products released fiber when they were worked: sawing and snapping asbestos-cement siding and pipe, cutting and drilling floor tile, sanding joint compound, and tearing the old material out during repairs and renovation. Whether you did that work yourself or worked alongside the tradesmen who did, we use the exposure record on those products, together with your work history, to connect your tasks to exposure from Flintkote's material. The list puts the product at your site; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

But the list isn't the only way in, and this is where people wrongly count themselves out. The trust's own rules accept other proof too: a sworn statement from you, an account from a coworker who remembers the products on the job, a family member's statement for someone who has passed, and employment, invoice, and construction records. So a worksite that isn't on the list doesn't disqualify you. It just means we document the exposure another way, which the trust expressly allows. 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 a Flintkote 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 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 Flintkote 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 worksite list and exposure rules, 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 Flintkote trust has been paying claims since 2015 and is still accepting them today, so the door is open. 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 Flintkote claim is rarely the only one

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

Start with the trade. A construction or building-trades worker didn't only handle Flintkote products. The same job sites were full of other companies' asbestos, the pipe and block insulation, other makers' floor tile and joint compound, the cement and roofing from competing brands, much of it made by companies that also went bankrupt and left their own trusts. The career that exposed a worker to Flintkote roofing or floor tile almost always exposed him to a stack of other asbestos products at the same time.

The same history that supports your Flintkote claim usually supports claims against several of those other trusts, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims don't compete with each other. They add up. how asbestos trust claims work.

A Flintkote claim makes a strong anchor for that larger case: a large, well-funded trust paying a rising percentage, with a broad worksite record behind it. But it's an anchor, not the whole of it. We walk through a full worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values. The full set of channels beyond the trusts is laid out next.

Sources of compensation beyond the Flintkote trust

A Flintkote 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. Flintkote is one, and as the section above explains, a building-trades career almost always reaches several others. They review and pay independently, so they stack. how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Many of the other companies whose asbestos a construction worker handled are still in business and can be sued directly for making and selling a product they knew was dangerous, 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 building owners, contractors, and facilities where this work was done can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed, 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. Military service, including construction and ship work, 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 Flintkote 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. Flintkote settled that question when it funded the trust, 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.