Burns and Roe Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked at a power plant, a desalting plant, a military base, or an industrial plant that the engineering firm Burns and Roe helped design or build, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the Burns and Roe trust may be part of your recovery. Most workers never knew Burns and Roe's name. It was the engineering firm, and sometimes the builder, behind the project, not the brand on a box of insulation.

Burns and Roe went through bankruptcy and set up a bankruptcy trust to pay asbestos claims. The trust now pays 36.87% of each claim's value, and a mesothelioma claim that meets its standard criteria is valued at $60,000 before that percentage is applied. That makes it a meaningful claim, but often one part of a larger case.

You don't need to know which company engineered your job site. Matching your work history to the trust's list of Burns and Roe projects is our job.

Who Burns and Roe was, and who was exposed

Burns and Roe was an engineering firm headquartered in Oradell, New Jersey. It filed for bankruptcy in December 2000 while facing mounting asbestos claims.

Burns and Roe's business was engineering, managing, and building projects. That's why the trust works from places rather than product names. It posts an Approved Site List made from Burns and Roe's own work orders. Each entry gives the facility, the owner or client, the scope of work, and the years. The entries we reviewed run from the 1930s into the 1980s and include:

• Electric generating stations. These include fossil-fuel plants such as Roseton Generating Station in New York and nuclear plants such as Oyster Creek in New Jersey, PSE&G's Salem units, and Three Mile Island. See utilities and power plants.
• Military and government work. Examples are the New York Naval Shipyard, the power and desalination plant at Guantanamo Bay, Air Force bases, and NASA facilities. See Navy exposure.
• Desalting plants and industrial plants, including oil company and chemical company projects.

A listed site is not proof by itself. The trust still needs credible evidence that you were exposed to asbestos it is responsible for. But the list tells us where to look. The people most likely to have a claim worked on those projects during construction, overhaul, or maintenance: construction trades, insulators, pipefitters and plumbers, boilermakers, electricians, and plant workers. People working near the dusty tasks were exposed too. See bystander and proximity workers.

The Burns and Roe bankruptcy and the trust

Burns and Roe Enterprises, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 4, 2000, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey (Case No. 00-41610). A related company, Burns and Roe Construction Group, Inc., filed in 2005 (Case No. 05-47946), and the two cases went forward together. The court confirmed a Fourth Amended Plan of Reorganization, and the Burns and Roe Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust was created in 2009 as a Section 524(g) trust.

The trust took claims from April 1, 2010. Its Initial Claims Filing Date was October 1, 2010, and claims filed between those two dates were treated as filed on October 1.

What the Burns and Roe trust pays

The trust's Trust Distribution Procedures set eight disease levels. Each has a scheduled value paid through Expedited Review. Each also has an average value and a maximum value that apply in Individual Review.

Source: Burns and Roe Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust Distribution Procedures, dated November 10, 2008, §5.3(a)(3) and §5.3(b)(4), as posted on the trust's website. These are values before the payment percentage. The Level I cash payment is a flat amount, and the payment percentage does not apply to it.

"Other cancer" means colorectal, laryngeal, esophageal, pharyngeal, or stomach cancer, along with signs of asbestos disease on both sides of the chest, such as lung scarring or pleural plaques.

The payment percentage

The trust pays a share of each claim's value, called the payment percentage, so the money lasts for people diagnosed in the future. The Burns and Roe percentage has gone up over time:

• 25% from July 16, 2009
• 32% from December 1, 2016. In 2017 the trust paid about $21.9 million in supplemental payments, reflecting both that increase and a new inflation-adjustment policy.
• 36.87% from March 13, 2024, under a trustee notice of that date, with the consent of the Future Claimants' Representative and the Trust Advisory Committee

The trust's website still posts the March 13, 2024 notice as its latest payment percentage notice. We found no newer rate, so 36.87% is the current rate as of November 2026. You can read the notice in our Burns and Roe trust notices.

The trust's finances

The trust has gotten smaller over time. Its net claimants' equity fell from about $176.5 million at the end of 2010 to about $92.3 million at the end of 2023, the latest annual report we hold. In 2023 it received 2,603 new claims, paid 473, and paid out about $5.6 million. See the Burns and Roe trust's annual reports for each year, with our summaries.

How a Burns and Roe claim works

Two ways to have a claim valued.

• Expedited Review pays the scheduled value if the claim meets the trust's fixed medical and exposure criteria.
• Individual Review looks at the claim's own facts. It can be valued higher or lower than the scheduled value, up to the maximum. It is open for Levels II through VIII. Lung cancer 2 claims go only through Individual Review. Claims that miss the Expedited Review criteria can also try Individual Review.

Exposure has to come before December 31, 1982. Every disease level needs "B&R Exposure": meaningful and credible exposure to asbestos or asbestos products that Burns and Roe is legally responsible for. Beyond that:

• Mesothelioma: the diagnosis plus B&R Exposure. No minimum time.
• Lung cancer 1, other cancer, severe asbestosis, and Level III: six months of B&R Exposure before December 31, 1982, plus "Significant Occupational Exposure." That means at least five years of asbestos work, with at least two years before December 31, 1982, either handling asbestos products or working regularly next to people who did. See occupational exposure.
• Level II: six months of B&R Exposure before December 31, 1982, plus five years of cumulative asbestos work.

Proof can be ordinary evidence. The trust accepts sworn statements from the claimant, a coworker, or (for a deceased worker) a family member, along with employment, construction, or similar records. The trust does not need proof of exposure to other companies' products.

Family members can file. Since March 1, 2022, a person exposed through a worker's clothes or household can use either Expedited or Individual Review. See take-home exposure.

Filing deadlines. The trust's catch-up deadline for older claims was October 1, 2013. In a 2013 notice, the trust told claimants diagnosed after December 4, 2000 to file within three years of diagnosis or by that date, whichever was later. For people diagnosed now, the procedures look to the statute of limitations that applies to the claim. Those rules vary by state, and deadlines for lawsuits and wrongful-death claims can be short, so it's best to call soon after a diagnosis.

Why a Burns and Roe claim is one part of a larger case

At 36.87%, a mesothelioma claim at the scheduled value brings about $22,000. A claim that goes through Individual Review can bring more. That's real money, but it is often not the whole recovery.

A power plant or industrial project often used asbestos from many makers. Workers handled pipe and boiler insulation, gaskets and packing, cement, and fireproofing, much of it made by companies that later went bankrupt and left their own trusts. Some makers and site owners are still in business and can be sued. The same diagnosis and work history may support claims against other trusts and companies, and each one that pays does so separately.

So we start with your whole work history, not one company. For more, see our guide to how asbestos trust claims work and our page on mesothelioma lawsuits.