Yarway Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked on steam systems, in a power plant, a shipyard, a Navy engine room, a refinery, or a paper or chemical plant, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, Yarway's valves and steam traps may be part of the story, and there's a trust set up to pay these claims.

For most of the twentieth century Yarway made the valves, steam traps, and controls that ran high-pressure steam systems, and the gaskets and packing that sealed those units against heat and pressure were asbestos. Maintaining the equipment, opening it up, scraping out the old gaskets, repacking the valves, released that fiber into the air. The lawsuits over it eventually pushed the company into bankruptcy, and the reorganization set aside a trust, funded with about $325 million from Yarway's corporate parent, that's been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2015. That trust is open, well funded, and recently raised what it pays.

You don't need to have kept records from a job you left decades ago, and you don't need to remember that a valve or steam trap was a Yarway. The trust pays on documented exposure to Yarway products before 1983, and reconstructing that from your work history is our job, not yours. If you can tell us the kind of work you did and roughly when and where, we have a place to start.

What the Yarway trust pays by disease

Mesothelioma sits at the top of the Yarway schedule (Level VII): a scheduled value of $55,000, and up to $150,000 through the trust's evidence-based Individual Review track. Because that gap is wide, we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, and for Yarway claims that path is the rule rather than the exception. These are the trust's set values before its payment percentage is applied, and as explained below that percentage was recently raised.

Lung cancer is split into two levels by exposure and smoking history, and lung cancer 2 (Level V) is paid only through Individual Review, so it carries no scheduled value. The two lowest levels pay a fixed amount with no separate average or maximum.

A trust's schedule shows what one trust assigns to a diagnosis, not what a whole case is worth. Almost everyone exposed to Yarway equipment handled many other companies' asbestos products too, the gaskets, packing, and insulation on the same systems, which usually means other trusts and often lawsuits on top of this one. We explain below why a Yarway claim is rarely the only one.

How Yarway products exposed workers to asbestos

Yarway built equipment for high-pressure steam: valves, steam traps, controls, and gauges that kept steam systems running in power plants, ships, refineries, and mills. Steam runs hot, and the joints and moving parts have to seal tight against heat and pressure, so for decades Yarway used asbestos to do it. The gaskets between the flanges and the packing inside the valves and traps were asbestos, and the company also made asbestos expansion-joint packing in its own right.

Intact, installed equipment isn't where the exposure came from. It came from the maintenance the trade did over and over:

• Breaking units open and replacing gaskets. Taking a valve or steam trap apart meant scraping the old gasket off the faces, often baked hard by years of heat, with a scraper, wire brush, or grinder. That released fiber every time.
• Repacking valves. Pulling the dried, degraded packing out of a valve and seating fresh asbestos packing rings raised dust on each job.
• Handling expansion-joint packing. Cutting and fitting the asbestos expansion-joint packing Yarway made released fiber directly.
• Breathing a neighbor's dust, and carrying it home. The tradesmen working the same lines breathed the same air, and the dust came home on work clothes to the families who laundered them.

Because Yarway equipment ran wherever high-pressure steam did, the exposure reached the steam and power trades broadly: pipefitters and steamfitters, boilermakers, power-plant operators and maintenance crews, Navy sailors who worked the engine and boiler rooms, shipyard and railroad workers, and the maintenance workers in paper, pulp, and chemical plants. The work that released the fiber, breaking joints and scraping and repacking, is the same work documented on our asbestos gaskets and packing page, where the air-measurement figures live.

How the Yarway bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

Yarway started in 1908 and spent the century as a steam-specialty maker, putting asbestos gaskets and packing into its valves and steam traps from the 1920s until it stopped using asbestos in 1988. By then the company had changed hands, bought by the valve maker Keystone International in the 1980s, and Keystone in turn was acquired by the global industrial company Tyco International in 1997, which made Yarway a Tyco subsidiary. The asbestos lawsuits kept coming regardless, into the thousands, and in April 2013 Yarway filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the kind that lets a business reorganize its affairs rather than simply vanish.

Asbestos bankruptcies are resolved through a part of the law written for exactly this problem, Section 524(g) of the Bankruptcy Code. It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability, then issue a channeling injunction, a court order routing every asbestos claim, the ones already filed and the ones not yet brought, into the trust instead of the company. Yarway's plan was confirmed in 2015, and the trust took effect that August. It was funded by Tyco with about $325 million in cash plus the ownership of the reorganized Yarway company. That backing from a large, solvent parent is part of why the trust is on steady footing today.

The Yarway name still appears on industrial products sold today, valves and boiler equipment under successor ownership, and those modern products contain no asbestos and have no connection to the old liability or the trust. The claims here concern the asbestos gaskets, packing, and steam equipment Yarway made decades ago, and they're paid by the trust.

What the Yarway trust pays, and why it's a percentage

The trust offers two filing tracks. Expedited Review is the fast path: if your diagnosis and exposure fit the trust's preset criteria, the claim is paid the fixed scheduled value for your disease level. Individual Review is the evidence-based path: the trust weighs the specifics of your case and can pay up to the higher maximum value. For Yarway claims, Individual Review is the one most people use, because the case-specific value it produces is usually well above the scheduled figure, which is why we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted.

Whichever track you file, the trust doesn't pay the full value of a claim. It pays a percentage of it, currently 27.5%. So a mesothelioma claim paid at the scheduled value works out to about $15,125 through Expedited Review, and Individual Review can carry it higher, up toward $41,250 at the maximum.

That percentage exists for a sound reason. Every asbestos trust has to make its funds last across decades, holding back enough for the people who won't be diagnosed for years, so it pays each claim a set share of full value rather than draining the fund on the claims that happen to come first. What's worth knowing about Yarway is the direction it's moved: the trust raised its payment percentage, and topped up the claims it had already paid at the older, lower rate with supplemental payments. A trust raising what it pays is a sign of health, not strain. We work from whatever the trust is paying when your claim is filed, and confirm it against the trust's current notice.

Is the Yarway trust still able to pay?

Yes, and it's in good shape. It's a well-funded trust working steadily through its claims, with a large solvent company's money behind it. Here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $213 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $213 million in net assets, most of it invested, down only modestly over the year.
• About $22 million paid in 2025. The trust settled roughly $22 million in claims over the year and has paid more than $200 million to claimants since it opened.
• It recently raised what it pays. Rather than cutting its payment percentage to conserve funds, the trust increased it and made supplemental payments on earlier claims, a sign the fund is keeping pace with the claims coming in.
• Its 2026 payments on cancer claims are on hold until January. The trust's rules cap how much it can pay each year on claims for mesothelioma, other cancers, and severe asbestosis. In August 2026 the trust announced it had reached that limit for the year: most of its August payments went out in October, and no more of these claims will be paid until January 2027, or sooner if the trust resets its payment percentage. Claims that wait go to the front of the line, and the wait doesn't change the percentage they're paid at.

No trust's money is unlimited, and the payment percentage is how any trust keeps its promise to the people who haven't been diagnosed yet. But the Yarway trust is open and well funded, and a claim filed today is valued at the current percentage, even if payment on a cancer claim waits for the 2027 payment year. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a Yarway trust claim

A claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and documented exposure to a Yarway 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.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. The trust pays on exposure before December 31, 1982, the heart of the period when these products carried asbestos. Most careers in steam, power, shipbuilding, and heavy industry of that era ran through that window, so the date is rarely the obstacle people fear. We explain your options if your exposure came later 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 that applies to the other disease levels. Those higher levels, the lung cancer and severe asbestosis levels, ask for about six months of Yarway exposure plus Significant Occupational Exposure, roughly five years of asbestos work (with at least two of them before the end of 1982) that can add up across different jobs, including time spent working in close proximity to others doing the dusty work.

The trust recognizes worksites and trades where Yarway equipment was used. Because Yarway valves and steam traps were installed at identifiable plants, yards, and ships, the trust maintains a list of more than 450 approved worksites, most of them the Navy and merchant ships where Yarway steam equipment ran, and it recognizes certain steam, shipyard, industrial, and railroad trades as the kind of work that put people around its products. If your job fits, that history helps establish exposure. Where it doesn't fit neatly, credible evidence still carries the claim: your own account, a coworker's, or a family member's, supported by whatever records exist. People rarely kept track of which company made a valve they serviced decades ago, and the claim doesn't depend on your having done so. 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 Yarway dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household may file on the same exposure history.

How a Yarway claim gets filed

A trust claim isn't a lawsuit. There's no judge, no jury, no deposition, and no defense lawyer on the other side. You submit a documented claim to a fund that exists to pay it, and the trust reviews it against its written rules and pays in turn. What the claim needs is proof of two things, your diagnosis and your exposure to a Yarway asbestos product before the cutoff, and putting that together is our work, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, match it against the trust's recognized worksites and trades, and choose the track that fits.

The trust is open and still accepting claims. The fuller mechanics of how trust claims are prepared, filed, and paid are in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. When you call, we'll tell you what your specific claim is likely to involve.

A Yarway claim is rarely the only one

For a steam or power exposure history, this is the part that changes the math, because the per-claim figure here is modest and it almost never stands alone.

A pipefitter, boilermaker, or power-plant maintenance worker didn't service one company's equipment for a whole career. The same systems were full of other companies' gaskets, packing, valves, and insulation, and a worker moved among plants, yards, and ships over the decades, adding more. Many of those makers went bankrupt too and left their own trusts, and others are still in business and can be sued directly. The same exposure history that supports your Yarway claim usually supports a stack of others, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims add up rather than compete.

That's why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. A work history that turns up several gasket, packing, and insulation trusts, plus lawsuits against the makers still in business and the plant or yard owners, can carry a mesothelioma case well past what any single trust pays. We walk through a worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

Sources of compensation beyond the Yarway trust

A Yarway 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 Yarway trust is one, and a steam or power career almost always reaches several others, the makers of the other gaskets, packing, and insulation on the same systems. They review and pay independently, so they stack. How asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. Many are still in business and can be sued directly for 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 plants, refineries, utilities, and yards 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. These matter more than usual for Yarway work, because so much of it touched ships and the military. 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 of these are paid on top of the trust and lawsuit recovery. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your Yarway trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom. 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 makers still in business and the site owners. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, and none of them is new to us.