A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of BNSF Railway, over a case involving the deaths of two people in 2020 who had been exposed to asbestos in a Montana mining town.

According to the Associated Press, the appeals court's ruling overturns a civil jury trial decision in 2024 that had awarded $4 million to each of the states of the two people who had died. Families of the victims had placed the blame on BNSF for allegedly allowing contaminated mining materials to accumulate in a rail yard in the town of Libby, Montana. In its ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with BNSF in the railway's claim that it was required by law to accept shipment of the contaminated materials, and that the company had been told it was safe.

BNSF is classified as what's known as a "common carrier," meaning that it’s generally required to haul cargo for customers if it’s legal to ship, a distinction the court said limited the railroad’s liability in this case since it was legally obligated to move the materials. The asbestos was found in vermiculite — a material used in construction insulation — mined in Libby and loaded onto rail cars, which then spilled into the town's rail yard periodically. Dust from the facility blew through downtown Libby for decades, where health officials say several hundred people were killed by asbestos exposure, with thousands of others sickened.

Several lawsuits have been filed in recent years against BNSF over its operations in Libby, although the railroad has argued that it was merely transporting materials mined and sold by chemical company W.R. Grace & Co., and that responsibility for the contamination rests with the business that operated the mine and processed the vermiculite. The mine itself was closed in 1990, and W.R. Grace has since paid out a series of hefty settlements to victims in the town.