H. K. Porter Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked with asbestos cloth, tape, rope, yarn or other asbestos textiles, or worked in a plant that made them, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the H. K. Porter name may come up in your case. Through companies it bought in the 1950s and 1960s, including Thermoid and Southern Asbestos, Porter became one of the country's makers of asbestos textiles.

Porter went through bankruptcy and set up a bankruptcy trust to pay asbestos claims. You can file against it. But we want to be honest with you up front. The H. K. Porter trust pays 3% of a claim's value, so a mesothelioma claim on the standard track brings $600. And the trust itself has told the court it expects to run out of money around 2029. Its value is as one piece of a larger set of claims.

You don't need old receipts or brand names to start. Piecing together the work history is our job, not yours.

What H. K. Porter made, and who used it

H. K. Porter Company, Inc. was a Pittsburgh manufacturer whose history goes back to 1866, when it began as a builder of locomotives. Starting in the 1950s, it bought a string of companies that made, sold or distributed asbestos products: the Thermoid Company, merged into Porter in December 1958; Southern Asbestos Company of Charlotte, North Carolina; the Asbestos Manufacturing Company; Carolina Asbestos Company; LaClede Christy; Russell Manufacturing; Tallman-McCluskey Fabrics of St. Louis; and Southern Textile. For several years it also owned the Pacific Asbestos mine at Copperopolis, California. Porter's plan papers say it made and sold asbestos products from the 1950s through 1983. You can read more in our history of H. K. Porter Company.

The trust's claim form lists the kinds of Porter products it covers: cloth, tape, rope, yarn, felt, fiber and refractory products. Porter's asbestos cloth went into safety clothing, welding blankets and lagging; its rope, yarn and tape were used for packing, wrapping and insulating hot equipment. See our page on asbestos textiles.

The people most likely to have handled Porter products include:

• Workers in asbestos textile plants, such as Porter's works in Charlotte and Davidson, North Carolina; Bennettsville, South Carolina; and St. Louis, Missouri.
• Insulators and pipefitters who wrapped pipe and equipment with asbestos cloth and tape. See insulators and pipefitters and plumbers.
• Shipyard workers, boilermakers and welders, who used asbestos cloth, blankets and protective gear. See shipyards, boilermakers and welders.
• Workers near furnaces and hot equipment, who wore protective clothing and used welding blankets made from asbestos cloth.

The H. K. Porter bankruptcy and the trust

Porter was first sued over asbestos in the early 1970s. By the time it filed for bankruptcy it had been named in about 78,000 lawsuits and had paid more than $200 million in settlements.

Porter filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on February 15, 1991, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The federal district and bankruptcy courts in Pittsburgh confirmed its reorganization plan together on June 25, 1998, and the plan took effect on July 28, 1998. The plan set up the H. K. Porter Asbestos Trust, a Section 524(g) trust, and gave it the stock of the reorganized company. A claims processor, Verus Claims Services, handles the claims.

In 2024 the trust went back to the bankruptcy court. It paused new offers while it reviewed the payment percentage. Lowering the percentage again would have pushed the smallest payments under $100 and soon made the cost of running the trust larger than what it paid out. In December 2024 the court ruled that the trustee, with the consent of the trust's advisory committee, had the power to amend the procedures. The trustee then amended them, effective December 30, 2024, to say that it need not cut the percentage if that would bring payments under $100 at any disease level, even if the trust then ends before every claim is paid. New offers resumed in January 2025 at 3%.

What the H. K. Porter trust pays

The trust's rules are called the Asbestos Claims Resolution Procedures. They set four disease levels, each with a value on the standard track and a higher maximum on the individual track.

Source: H.K. Porter Company, Inc. Asbestos Claims Resolution Procedures, §5.2(a) (expedited amounts) and §5.3(b) (maximum non-expedited values), as compiled with modifications as of December 30, 2024. The trust's own court filings in November 2024 give the 3% expedited figures. The "at 3%" figures for individual review are our arithmetic; an individual offer can be less than the maximum.

"Other cancer" means primary cancer of the larynx, pharynx or digestive tract. "Non-malignant disease" covers asbestosis, pleural plaques and pleural thickening.

The payment percentage, and how it has fallen

A trust pays a set share of each claim's value so it can keep paying people diagnosed years from now. The Porter trust's share has gone up and down:

• 4.6% from the trust's start through 2009
• 6.3% in 2010 and 2011
• 4.0% in 2012 and 2013
• 3.0% from June 10, 2014

3% is the rate in the trust's latest annual report, for 2025, filed in March 2026.

The trust's finances

Through August 2024, the trust had received more than 792,000 claims and paid about $160.8 million on nearly 548,000 of them. Its net claimants' equity fell from about $34.8 million at the end of 2015 to about $13.3 million at the end of 2025. In 2025, after offers resumed, it paid 20,533 claims, about $3.68 million in all. Year-by-year detail is in the H. K. Porter trust's annual reports, each with our plain-English summary, and its notices are here.

How an H. K. Porter claim works

Most claims take the standard track. Under the Expedited Payment Election, the trust checks the claim against its medical rules and, if it qualifies, pays the fixed amount for that disease level times the payment percentage. More than 95% of claimants choose this track. If the trust turns down an expedited claim, that decision can't be appealed, but the claimant can switch to individual review.

Individual review is for serious cases. On the Non-Expedited track, the trust looks at the person's exposure, medical evidence, age, family situation and losses, and where the case would have been tried, and makes an offer up to the maximum for that disease level, times the payment percentage. Claims are reviewed in the order they were filed, using a first-in, first-out queue. A claimant who turns down an offer goes to mediation in Pittsburgh and then, if needed, to binding or non-binding arbitration. Only someone who chooses non-binding arbitration can then sue the trust. Claimants who are gravely ill can ask the trust to handle their claim out of order as an Exigent Health claim.

Medical proof. A mesothelioma claim needs a pathology or operative report showing the disease. A lung cancer or other cancer claim needs that report plus one of the following: signs of asbestos disease in the lungs or chest lining, a doctor's opinion that asbestos caused or contributed to the cancer, or at least ten years of work around asbestos products. See occupational exposure.

Exposure proof. The claim form asks, for each job, the dates, the occupation, the site, the type of Porter product and which Porter company made it. The trust accepts sworn statements and declarations. For individual review, the trust weighs exposure to Porter products made before December 31, 1982.

Family members can file. Someone who got sick from dust brought home on a worker's clothes can file. The claim form has its own section for this, describing the worker's exposure. See take-home exposure.

Filing deadlines. The trust's statute-of-limitations policy treats the clock as starting no earlier than August 1, 1999, or the date of diagnosis if later, with a 60-day grace period. It applies the longer of the deadlines in the state where the person lived or the state where the exposure happened. The policy has other conditions: claims already too late when Porter filed in 1991 aren't eligible, and for claims filed after September 8, 2010, a lawsuit against other companies doesn't stop the clock. We check these for every claim. See statute of limitations. Wrongful-death and state deadlines can be shorter, so call soon.

Why an H. K. Porter claim is one piece of a bigger case

At 3%, a standard Porter mesothelioma claim pays $600. We file it when the facts support it, but it is not where the recovery comes from.

People who handled asbestos cloth, tape and rope usually worked with many other asbestos products too: pipe and boiler insulation, gaskets and packing, cements and refractory materials. Many of the companies that made them also went bankrupt and left trusts, and several of those trusts pay a much larger share. Other makers 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.

That's why our first step is a full work history, not a single brand name. To learn more, read our guide to how asbestos trust claims work and our page on mesothelioma lawsuits.