Garlock Asbestos Trust Claims

If you spent years working around gaskets and packing, sealing flanged joints and valves on industrial piping or shipboard machinery, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the Garlock trust may be built for exactly your trade. Garlock Sealing Technologies was one of the largest makers of asbestos gaskets and packing in the country, and the trust that now pays its claims, the GST Settlement Facility, was funded with about $480 million.

Garlock works differently from most asbestos trusts, and it's worth understanding why. Most trusts set one value per disease. Garlock sets the value mainly by your trade, by how hands-on your gasket and packing work was. The pipefitters, steamfitters, millwrights, and Navy machinist's mates who cut, scraped, and tore out gaskets and packing for a living sit at the top of its scale; trades that were further from that work sit lower. It's a gasket-and-packing trust, and it pays the gasket-and-packing trades.

You don't need to know that the gasket was a Garlock, and you don't need old records. Reconstructing the work history, and matching it to the trade categories the trust uses, is our job.

What the Garlock trust pays, and how your trade sets the value

Garlock doesn't publish a single mesothelioma value. Instead it sorts occupations into five Contact Groups, by how much hands-on gasket and packing removal the trade involved, and each group has a maximum settlement value. The closer your trade was to cutting, scraping, and removing gaskets and packing, the higher the group.

For mesothelioma, the maximums are:

Where common trades land:

• Group 1: pipefitters, steamfitters, industrial plumbers, millwrights (in chemical, maritime, military, petrochemical, shipyard, textile, and utility settings), and Navy and maritime machinist's mates, machinery repairmen, and Navy pipefitters.
• Group 2: boilermakers and boiler technicians, machinists and firemen in maritime and shipyard settings, refinery workers, shipfitters, and Navy boiler technicians, enginemen, and firemen.
• Group 3: welders, electricians, sheet-metal workers, power-plant operators, shipyard workers, steelworkers, factory and plant workers, railroad workers.
• Groups 4–5: insulators, carpenters, longshoremen, auto and brake mechanics, and do-it-yourself and residential work, trades whose contact with Garlock gaskets and packing was occasional or incidental.

Two things matter on top of the group. First, the figures above are ceilings, not the amount paid: the trust scales each one by a set of personal factors, the diagnosis, the worker's age, whether he's living or has passed, dependents, and how long he did the work, so most offers come in below the maximum, with younger living workers who have dependents landing highest. Second, mesothelioma is treated more favorably than other diseases: it carries no minimum-exposure requirement, and even in the lower groups its floor is well above the non-malignant values. Because the gap between the group maximums is so wide, we do a careful occupational history to place the work in the highest group the evidence supports.

What Garlock made, and how it exposed workers

Garlock made sealing products, the gaskets and packing that kept pressurized systems from leaking. Its best-known asbestos products were compressed asbestos sheet gaskets, gaskets cut to fit flanged joints, and the compression packing used in valves and pumps. Through its Anchor Packing line, acquired in the 1980s, it added still more asbestos packing. These products went into nearly every industry that ran pipe and machinery: refineries and chemical plants, power generation, shipyards and the Navy, pulp and paper, steel, and general industrial maintenance.

The exposure came from servicing the joint, not from the gasket sitting in place. A gasket bakes onto the flange faces over years of heat, and getting it off means scraping, wire-brushing, and grinding the dried asbestos material loose, which sends fiber into the air. Cutting a new gasket from sheet stock, and pulling and replacing old packing, did the same. The trust's own rules are built around these specific tasks, because that hands-on removal and cutting work is what released the fiber from products that otherwise held it bound.

The trades that did that work, day in and day out, are the ones the trust ranks highest: pipefitters and steamfitters, millwrights, machinist's mates, and the other gasket and packing trades. The industrial-hygiene measurements for gasket and packing work live on the product page that owns them.

The Garlock bankruptcy, and how the trust is built

Garlock Sealing Technologies and its affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010 to resolve the thousands of asbestos claims its gaskets and packing had generated. After a long and hard-fought case, the GST Settlement Facility took effect on July 31, 2017, 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 trust began accepting claims in September 2018. It also covers the asbestos claims of Coltec Industries, a related company in the same corporate family, so a single facility handles both the Garlock and Coltec gasket and packing claims.

The trust was funded with about $480 million, contributed by the Garlock companies and their parent, EnPro, in a mix of cash and other commitments. The operating businesses survived the bankruptcy: Garlock continues today as a sealing-products maker under EnPro, asbestos-free and separate from the old liability. The claims here concern the asbestos gaskets and packing these companies made decades ago, and they're paid by the trust.

One feature of this trust traces directly to that hard-fought bankruptcy. Because the court examined closely how Garlock's products released fiber, finding that they were largely bound until ground, scraped, cut, or torn out, the trust's eligibility rules are written around those specific hands-on tasks rather than mere presence at a worksite. That's why the trade you worked, and what you did with the gaskets and packing, drives both whether you qualify and what the claim is worth.

How Garlock values and pays a claim

Garlock offers two review tracks.

Expedited Claim Review is the standard path. The trust places the worker's occupation in a Contact Group, takes that group's maximum settlement value for the disease, and scales it by the personal factors described above, the diagnosis, age, living-or-deceased status, dependents, and duration of the work, to produce the offer. Most claims go this route, and it doesn't require disclosing your other asbestos claims.

Extraordinary Claim Review is a narrow, optional path for mesothelioma and other malignant claims where the worker's exposure was overwhelmingly to Garlock products, with little exposure to anyone else's asbestos and little prospect of recovering elsewhere. It can pay up to five times the standard amount, but it requires full disclosure of every other claim, lawsuit, and trust filing, authorization for the trust to pull those records, and sworn certifications, and the trust then weighs how many other companies contributed to the exposure. For the typical worker, who was exposed to many companies' asbestos, the standard track is the right one, and the other claims are pursued separately rather than folded in here.

Rather than a single published payment percentage, Garlock manages a yearly payment budget and the individual-factor scaling described above, and it adjusts its maximum settlement values for inflation each year. We work from the trust's current values and rules when your claim is filed.

Is the Garlock trust still able to pay?

Yes, and it's paying at a higher rate than ever. Here's the picture from its most recent audited financial statements.

• About $358 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $358 million in net assets available to pay claims, most of it invested.
• A bigger year of payments. The trust paid out about $53.7 million in asbestos claims in 2025, up sharply from about $32.5 million the year before. It's open and actively accepting and paying claims today.
• A maturing trust drawing down. That balance has come down from about $405 million two years earlier. The trust's investments did well in 2025, but it paid out faster than they replenished the fund, which is what a trust set up to compensate present and future claimants does as it matures.

As with every asbestos trust, the money has to last across decades for the people not yet diagnosed, which is the reason for the yearly payment budget and the individual-factor scaling. The Garlock trust is open, well funded, and paying at a higher rate than in past years, and a claim filed today is handled under its current rules. We track the trust's reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a Garlock trust claim

A claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and evidence that the worker actually handled Garlock or Coltec gaskets or packing in the hands-on way the trust recognizes.

The contact has to be hands-on with gaskets or packing. This is the heart of the Garlock rules. The trust looks for the worker to have, on a regular basis, ground, scraped, or wire-brushed gaskets while removing them; cut gaskets from asbestos sheet material; or cut or removed asbestos packing. Close-bystander contact, working regularly right alongside someone doing that, also counts. Simply being at a site where Garlock products were present is not, by itself, enough. This is why the trade and the actual tasks matter so much, and why reconstructing them carefully is the core of the work.

For mesothelioma, there's no minimum. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that, so a meso claim needs credible gasket or packing contact but no minimum length of time. Every other disease needs at least six months of total Garlock contact across the career.

There's no 1982 cutoff. Garlock and Coltec made asbestos gaskets and packing through the end of 2000, so unlike trusts tied to exposure before 1982, this one reaches gasket and packing work well into the 1980s and 1990s. The claim does require the standard ten-year gap between first asbestos exposure and diagnosis.

Family members may qualify, for mesothelioma. If a worker carried the dust home, a spouse or household member with mesothelioma can file on that secondary exposure. (For Garlock, secondary-exposure claims are limited to mesothelioma.)

A Garlock claim is rarely a single claim

For a gasket and packing worker, this is the part that changes the math.

Nobody worked around just one company's gaskets and packing. A pipefitter or machinist's mate broke and remade joints sealed with products from many makers over a career, and several of those makers, like Garlock, left asbestos trusts, while at least one major gasket and packing maker is still in business and can be sued directly in court. The same diagnosis and work history that support a Garlock claim usually support a stack of others, and because each is resolved on its own, they add up rather than compete.

The gasket and packing trail in particular tends to run through several trusts at once. The same career that reaches Garlock often reaches the Flexitallic gaskets in the Federal-Mogul trust, the near-universal Manville trust, and others, plus a lawsuit against the solvent gasket and packing maker still in the tort system. We map the whole set and file across all of it. We walk through a worked example in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

One connection is easy to miss. The raw asbestos fiber in many Garlock gaskets and packing came from ASARCO, the mining company, and the ASARCO trust accepts identification of the specific products made with its fiber, Garlock's among them, as proof of exposure. So the same gasket and packing work that supports your Garlock claim will often support an ASARCO claim too, through the very same products.

Sources of compensation beyond the Garlock trust

A Garlock claim usually sits inside a larger recovery, and the channels run in parallel without canceling one another out.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. Garlock is one, and a gasket and packing career almost always reaches several others. They review and pay independently, so they stack. how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. At least one major gasket and packing maker is still in business and can be sued directly, and that matters here, especially for later exposure. 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, powerhouses, and shipyards that controlled the worksites can be held responsible for the conditions there, separate from the companies that made the products. how premises liability claims work.
• Federal and disability benefits. This one matters a great deal for Garlock, because so much gasket and packing work was shipboard. Navy machinist's mates, pipefitters, and boiler technicians sit at the top of the trust's trade rankings, and Navy service can support VA disability benefits while 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 Garlock trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom. Defenses come up only on the lawsuit side, against the gasket and packing maker still in business and the site owners, and gasket cases draw one argument especially hard.