Student Bloggers Given Access to W.R. Grace Trial

A group of journalism and law students from the University of Montana have been given access to the W. R. Grace & Co. trial being held at the U.S. District Court in Missoula, Montana.

A law student is paired with a journalism student, and each pair works a two-hour shift to offer online coverage of the trial via their blog at http://blog.umt.edu/gracecase.

Several communities in Montana were exposed to asbestos that W.R. Grace mined and processed in Libby, Montana. Lawyers for Libby residents contend the pollution has killed some 225 people and sickened about 2,000 in Libby.

W.R. Grace officials are now facing criminal charges. It is alleged that they knowingly endangered the lives of Libby, Montana residents by obscuring the dangers of asbestos.

Exposure to asbestos is the conclusive cause of asbestosis and mesothelioma cancer, and in Libby, over a thousand residents have been diagnosed with an asbestos-caused illness. Mesothelioma is considered to be one of the rarest forms of cancer and has no known cure. Many locals did not receive any type of mesothelioma information until after being diagnosed with this aggressive disease, which has a latency period of as many as fifty years.

The trial commenced on February 23rd, 2009, and is expected to last for at least three months.

The trial judge, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy, “has been very amenable to this project,” according to project coordinator Nadia White. The judge has ensured that there are always two seats reserved for the student bloggers in the media section of the courtroom.

34 students (17 each from the journalism and law schools) are involved in the trial coverage.

Carly Flandro, a Journalism major, works a shift at the courthouse once or twice a week. “When I’m in court, I’m supposed to send a tweet (a brief online message) every 10 minutes…I usually write one or two blog posts after my shift, which lasts two hours. We can do so from the court, where we sit in the media section equipped with computers and notebooks.”

All students are receiving academic credit for their participation.