Owens-Illinois Asbestos Personal Injury Trust

The Owens-Illinois Asbestos Personal Injury Trust is a court-supervised fund established to pay compensation to people harmed by exposure to asbestos-containing products made or sold by Owens-Illinois, Inc., most notably its Kaylo pipe and block insulation, which Owens-Illinois made until the end of 1958. The Trust evaluates claims under a Trust Distribution Procedure (TDP) that assigns disease values and exposure criteria, then pays qualifying claimants a percentage of the scheduled value. The trust was created in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Paddock Enterprises, the Owens-Illinois company that took on its asbestos liabilities and filed in 2020; it began operating in July 2022 with about $610 million in funding.

Origin

Owens-Illinois (O-I) is a glass-container manufacturer that, during the postwar decade, also produced Kaylo, a calcium-silicate thermal insulation containing about 15 to 20 percent asbestos. O-I sold the Kaylo line to Owens Corning Fiberglas in 1958 but remained a defendant in tens of thousands of asbestos personal injury lawsuits for decades. In 2020 those liabilities were placed in Paddock Enterprises, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; its plan was confirmed in 2022, and the trust pays claims for exposure to Owens-Illinois asbestos before December 31, 1958.

Significance in Asbestos Context

For patients with mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, or other asbestos-related diseases, the Owens-Illinois Trust can be one of multiple sources of compensation, especially for those exposed to pipe insulation, block insulation, or steam-system materials in shipyards, refineries, power plants, schools, and industrial sites during the 1940s and 1950s. Because Kaylo was widely specified by insulation contractors, exposure may be provable through co-worker testimony, jobsite records, or product identification depositions even decades later. Your legal team will typically file an Owens-Illinois claim alongside claims against other trusts (such as Johns-Manville, Owens Corning Fiberglas/Fibreboard, and Babcock & Wilcox) and any solvent defendants in the tort system; payments from each are separate but coordinated.

Example Sentence

After confirming that her late husband had cut and installed Kaylo pipe covering at the Navy yard in 1952, the attorneys filed a claim with the Owens-Illinois Asbestos Personal Injury Trust in addition to several other trust claims.

Related Terms

Kaylo, Trust Distribution Procedure (TDP), Asbestos Bankruptcy Trust, Owens Corning Fibreboard Asbestos PI Trust, Product Identification, Amosite

Notes

• Preserve any evidence of Kaylo exposure: employment records, union records, military service records (especially Navy and shipyard assignments before 1959), co-worker affidavits, and photographs of jobsites or product packaging.
• Ask family members to write down what the patient remembers about insulation work, brand names on boxes, and the contractors or trades present on the job. These details directly affect trust claim eligibility and payment percentages.
• Confirm with your attorney that all potentially applicable trusts are being pursued; failing to file with a relevant trust can leave money on the table, and most trusts have claim deadlines and statute-of-limitations rules tied to diagnosis date.
• Disease level matters: mesothelioma and lung cancer claims are valued and processed differently than non-malignant asbestosis or pleural disease claims under the TDP.