DII Industries Asbestos Trust: Halliburton and Harbison-Walker Claims

If you or someone in your family worked around the asbestos products of Halliburton, Dresser Industries, or Harbison-Walker, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the DII Industries trust was built to pay exactly these claims.

The DII Industries trust is unusual: it covers two very different companies at once. One is the old line of Dresser Industries equipment, the industrial pumps, compressors, and turbines, now part of Halliburton, along with the asbestos-bearing drilling muds used in the oil and gas fields. The other is Harbison-Walker, one of the country's largest makers of refractory (heat-resistant) brick and cement, the lining of the furnaces, kilns, and ladles in steel mills and foundries everywhere. Both companies' asbestos liabilities were resolved together in a single bankruptcy trust, funded with about $2.5 billion. That trust has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2005, and it's still open and still paying, at one of the highest payment percentages of any asbestos trust.

You don't need to have kept your old records, and you don't need to know whether the product was a Halliburton, Dresser, or Harbison-Walker product. The trust pays on documented exposure to either company's asbestos, 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 DII Industries trust pays by disease level

Because the trust covers two companies, it keeps two separate value schedules, and which one applies to your claim depends on which company's products exposed you. Mesothelioma is the top level on both, but the Harbison-Walker schedule pays substantially more than the Halliburton and Dresser schedule, so identifying the right company matters a great deal to the value of a claim. We work that out as part of building the case.

Each schedule lists a scheduled value (the trust's preset fast-track amount, which the trust adjusts upward over time for inflation, so the figures below are the current ones) and a higher maximum value reachable through individual review. Both are then reduced by the trust's payment percentage, explained below.

Harbison-Walker claims (refractory brick, cement, and millboard):

Halliburton and Dresser claims (pumps, compressors, turbines, and drilling muds):

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 maximum instead. A dash in the maximum column (the lower asbestosis and pleural levels) means that level is paid its set scheduled amount with no higher tier above it.

The trust pays a percentage of these values, currently 60%, which is among the highest of any asbestos trust. For a Harbison-Walker mesothelioma claim that brings the scheduled fast-track payment to roughly $87,000, and individual review can reach up to about $366,000; for a Halliburton or Dresser mesothelioma claim, the scheduled payment is roughly $36,000, with individual review up to about $154,000.

These are one trust's values, not your family's whole recovery, and almost everyone exposed to these products was exposed to other companies' asbestos too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. What this 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 the Halliburton, Dresser, and Harbison-Walker products exposed workers

The DII trust covers two very different companies, so the exposure comes from two different worlds of work.

The Halliburton and Dresser side: industrial equipment, and drilling muds. Most of the exposure here came from industrial machinery. Dresser Industries built pumps, compressors, and turbines, sold under names like Worthington, Clark, Roots, and Pacific, that ran in refineries, power plants, factories, pipelines, and ships across the country. The machines themselves were full of asbestos: the gaskets sealing their flanges and casings, the packing in their pumps and valves, and the insulation lagged around the hot ones. The men who installed, operated, and above all maintained and rebuilt this equipment were exposed every time they broke a joint and scraped off the old gasket, repacked a pump, or stripped and replaced insulation, the ordinary, repeated work of keeping industrial machinery running. That maintenance work, done by far more people across far more sites, is where most of this exposure happened. See how asbestos gaskets and packing caused exposure.

Separately, in the oil and gas fields, Dresser's Magcobar drilling-fluids business sold asbestos drilling mud additives, among them Visbestos and Super Visbestos, which Union Carbide made; the additives were poured and mixed by hand into drilling mud. The workers who handled and mixed those dry asbestos additives at the well site breathed the dust directly.

The Harbison-Walker side: refractory brick, cement, and millboard. Harbison-Walker was one of the largest refractory makers in the country, and refractories are the heat-resistant materials that line anything that has to hold extreme heat: the furnaces, kilns, ladles, and boilers of steel mills, foundries, glass plants, and similar industries. Its asbestos products included refractory brick, refractory cement (used to set and patch the brick), and asbestos millboard. The bricklayers and refractory masons who built, patched, and tore out these linings, and the steel and foundry workers around them, were exposed when the brick and millboard were cut and the cement was mixed, and especially when old, friable (crumbly and dusty) linings were demolished and rebuilt, hot, dirty work done over and over on a furnace's life cycle. See how asbestos refractory brick and cement caused exposure.

Two companies, two kinds of work, but the same result, and the fact that they're paid by the same trust is a convenience of the bankruptcy, not a sign the exposures were alike. That two-sided history is the first sign of why one of these claims is rarely the only one.

How the DII Industries bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

The two companies behind this trust came together through corporate history. Dresser Industries, the maker of the pumps, compressors, and turbines, was acquired by Halliburton in 1998 and renamed DII Industries. Harbison-Walker, the refractory maker, had been part of the same corporate family. By the early 2000s, the asbestos claims against all of them, Dresser's equipment, Halliburton's related operations, and Harbison-Walker's refractories, had grown too large to resolve one lawsuit at a time, and the companies turned to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of shutting down. 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 companies and into the trust. From that point on, the trust pays the claims in the companies' place. The trade the law strikes is straightforward: the trust is funded up front, and in return the companies, Halliburton included, are protected from being sued over that asbestos again.

The trust became effective in 2005 and was funded heavily, with about $2.5 billion, drawn largely from cash and a block of Halliburton stock, plus an agreement to add certain future insurance recoveries. The plan provided for two separate value schedules within the one trust, one for Harbison-Walker's refractory claims and one for the Halliburton and Dresser claims, which is why this trust pays the two kinds of claims at different rates. That trust is what you file against today.

Halliburton itself is alive and thriving. The bankruptcy didn't shut anything down. The channeling injunction moved the asbestos liability into the trust, and Halliburton, which absorbed Dresser, remains one of the largest energy-services companies in the world today. That matters for two reasons. It shows that an asbestos bankruptcy didn't make the company or its records disappear. And because the trust, not any operating company, pays these claims, filing yours doesn't take a dollar from anyone working today; it's paid by a fund set aside years ago for exactly this purpose.

Why the DII Industries 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 each schedule and the non-malignant conditions like asbestosis lower down. The full breakdown, for both companies, is in the tables 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, 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. 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, and here the news is good: that percentage is currently 60%, sixty cents on each dollar of a claim's value, which is among the very highest of any asbestos trust. Many trusts pay only single digits; this one pays more than half.

That a trust pays a percentage at all surprises people, so here's why. 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 too, 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. That this trust can pay 60% and still keep that promise reflects how well it was funded relative to its claims. 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 DII Industries trust still able to pay?

Yes, and it's one of the stronger asbestos trusts operating. Here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $1.15 billion on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $1.15 billion in net assets available to pay claims (what the trust calls net claimants' equity). It drew down modestly over the year, by about $28 million, while its investments earned enough to nearly hold the fund steady.
• About $121 million paid to claimants in 2025. In that single year the trust paid out roughly $121 million across both companies' claims, several thousand of them.
• Paying at 60 cents on the dollar. The clearest sign of the trust's health is that it pays one of the highest percentages in the asbestos trust system, far more than the single-digit rates many older trusts have fallen to.

None of that means the money is unlimited, and the trust still pays a set percentage rather than the full value of each claim, holding reserves against a long line of claims to come. But the trust is open, well funded, and paying generously 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 DII Industries trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to a covered Halliburton, Dresser, or Harbison-Walker asbestos product 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.

Which company exposed you decides which schedule applies. This is the first thing we sort out, because the two schedules pay very differently. Exposure to Harbison-Walker's refractory brick, cement, and millboard is paid on the higher Harbison-Walker schedule; exposure to the Dresser and Halliburton equipment and drilling muds is paid on the other. Some workers were exposed to both, in which case both can be in play. Working out which products were present in your work, and therefore which schedule fits, is part of building the claim.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. Like most asbestos trusts, this 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. Most careers around this equipment or this refractory work ran straight through that window.

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, where the higher level depends on how much lung function you've lost, measured by a breathing test (a pulmonary function test). 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 worker brought this 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 exposure two ways, and you only need one of them. The first is its approved site list: more than 5,000 worksites the trust already accepts as places these companies' asbestos was present, the refineries, power plants, steel mills, foundries, and other facilities where the equipment ran or the refractories were used. 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 one of these products, even at a site the list never names. A coworker's account, a purchase or specification record, or the kind of work you did and where can establish it.

But proving one of these companies' products was at your site, by either door, isn't the same as being exposed to it, and the trust asks both questions: whether the 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. On the equipment side, breaking joints and scraping gaskets and packing and stripping insulation off pumps and compressors released fiber; on the refractory side, cutting brick and millboard, mixing cement, and tearing out old refractory lining did the same. 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. The list puts the product at your site; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

Not finding your site on the 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 DII Industries 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 one of these companies' products during the covered period. Putting that together is our job, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, work out which company's products were present and therefore which schedule applies, match it against the trust's approved site list or document the products, and choose the track that fits your situation. You don't need to have kept paperwork or remember product names to start.

The DII Industries trust has been open and paying since 2005 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 DII Industries claim is rarely the only one

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

For the equipment side, a worker who maintained Dresser pumps and compressors handled other makers' equipment too, and the asbestos that exposed him, the gaskets, the packing, the insulation, came from many manufacturers, not just one. For the refractory side, a bricklayer or steelworker around Harbison-Walker linings worked amid other companies' refractory products and the insulation and other asbestos materials throughout the plant. Either way, many of those makers went bankrupt too, and each one left its own trust.

So the same work history that supports your DII 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. how asbestos trust claims work.

This is why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. Each trust pays its own fraction, and 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 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 DII Industries trust

A DII 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. This trust is one, and a career around industrial equipment or refractory work almost always reaches several others, the makers of the gaskets, packing, insulation, and other products on the same job. They review and pay independently, so they stack. how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. Some, including makers of the gaskets, packing, and equipment found on these same job sites, are still in business and can be sued directly, 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 refineries, power plants, steel mills, foundries, and oilfields where this equipment ran and these refractories were used 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. These depend on where and how the work was done, and they're paid on top of the trust and lawsuit recovery. Because Dresser equipment ran aboard Navy and merchant ships, Navy service can support VA disability benefits and 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 DII Industries 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.