EvilCorporations.com | Corporate Accountability Reporting
Pabst Brewing Company · Asbestos Negligence · 1970s–2026
Pabst Brewing Knew Their Brewery Was Poisoning Workers for Decades and Did Nothing
A steamfitter died of mesothelioma after inhaling asbestos dust at Pabst’s Milwaukee brewery. Pabst knew about the danger since 1971. They chose to keep buying asbestos insulation anyway.
● Critical Severity
TL;DR
Gerald Lorbiecki spent decades as a union steamfitter. In the mid-1970s, he worked at Pabst Brewing Company’s Milwaukee brewery, cutting and replacing pipe insulation that was packed with asbestos. Pabst knew the brewery contained miles of asbestos-insulated pipes. Pabst knew airborne asbestos caused serious illness. Pabst received OSHA citations as late as 1986 for broken asbestos insulation on its premises. Pabst did not warn workers. Pabst did not require protective measures. Pabst kept ordering more asbestos insulation. In 2017, Lorbiecki was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a deadly cancer caused directly by asbestos exposure. He died before his case went to trial. A Wisconsin jury found Pabst liable and awarded $20 million in punitive damages. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld that verdict in April 2026.
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$20M
Punitive damages awarded by the jury
$6.5M
Total compensatory damages found by the jury
$7M
Final judgment entered against Pabst
1963
Year asbestos deliveries to the brewery began
1971
Year Pabst first documented asbestos health risks internally
1986
Year Pabst received OSHA citation for broken asbestos pipe insulation
22%
Share of liability apportioned to Pabst by the jury
5–1
Wisconsin Supreme Court majority upholding the verdict
What Pabst Did: A Breakdown
Core Allegations
What Pabst did to its workers · 8 points
▼
| 01 | Pabst Brewing Company owned and operated a Milwaukee brewery containing what its own corporate representative described as “many miles” of asbestos-insulated pipe, creating an environment saturated with a known carcinogen. | high |
| 02 | Pabst employed steamfitters, including Gerald Lorbiecki, through independent contractors to cut and replace that asbestos-covered pipe. The standard method of the time involved chipping insulation off with hammers, chisels, and saws, sending asbestos dust flying into the air. | high |
| 03 | Pabst knew by June 1971 that airborne asbestos caused serious illness. The company summarized OSHA regulations in an internal memo that specifically identified asbestosis as an occupational disease. They had this knowledge decades before Lorbiecki developed cancer. | high |
| 04 | Despite documented knowledge of the health risk, Pabst took no steps to warn steamfitters working on its premises about asbestos. The company also failed to require protective equipment or dust-reduction methods. | high |
| 05 | Pabst has no documentation of any asbestos abatement prior to the early 1990s, meaning workers were exposed to deteriorating, disturbed asbestos insulation for at least two decades after the company acknowledged the health risks in writing. | high |
| 06 | As late as 1986, OSHA cited Pabst for having broken asbestos pipe insulation inside the brewery. The company had received its own internal memo identifying asbestos as dangerous fifteen years earlier and still had not addressed the hazard. | high |
| 07 | Gerald Lorbiecki was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2017. He died before his case reached trial. His estate, his wife Carol (who also died during the proceedings), and his son Scott continued the lawsuit in his place. | high |
| 08 | A jury determined that Pabst acted “in an intentional disregard of the rights of Gerald Lorbiecki” and awarded $20 million in punitive damages. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the finding that Pabst knew workers were being exposed to airborne asbestos and chose to do nothing. | high |
Regulatory Failures
How oversight was ignored · 5 points
▼
| 01 | Both OSHA and the Wisconsin Industrial Commission issued regulations identifying asbestos as harmful to human health by June 1971. Pabst summarized these regulations internally. The company treated regulatory awareness as an administrative exercise, not as a call to protect workers. | high |
| 02 | Pabst circulated a memo to outside contractors requiring them to follow OSHA regulations at its facility. The company used regulatory compliance language as a shield while continuing to expose workers to the very hazard those regulations were designed to prevent. | medium |
| 03 | Although new asbestos pipe insulation was banned in 1975, Pabst still had not addressed the enormous quantity of existing asbestos insulation already in the brewery. The regulatory ban on new material did nothing to protect workers from the miles of asbestos already installed. | high |
| 04 | OSHA cited Pabst in 1986 for broken asbestos insulation in the brewery. The company received this government citation for the exact conditions that killed Gerald Lorbiecki, yet had no record of meaningful remediation for another several years. | high |
| 05 | Wisconsin’s safe-place statute, enacted during the Progressive Era to protect workers, imposes a non-delegable duty on property owners to maintain safe premises. Pabst attempted to avoid that duty by arguing that because independent contractors performed the work, it bore no responsibility for the asbestos environment it owned and controlled. | medium |
Profit Over People
The choice Pabst made repeatedly · 4 points
▼
| 01 | Between 1963 and 1974 alone, Sprinkmann Sons delivered hundreds of pounds and thousands of feet of asbestos-containing insulation to Pabst’s brewery. Pabst continued purchasing this material after it was known to cause disease, prioritizing cheap, available insulation over worker health. | high |
| 02 | Rather than invest in asbestos abatement, protective protocols, or alternative methods after the 1971 OSHA regulations, Pabst continued operations unchanged. The cost of protecting workers was simply not paid. | high |
| 03 | Pabst mandated that contractors notify it before making welds or cuts, primarily to prevent fire and explosion hazards that threatened its facility. The same attentiveness was never applied to the asbestos hazard threatening the workers performing those cuts. | medium |
| 04 | The jury found that Pabst’s conduct met the standard of “intentional disregard” of workers’ rights, the threshold required for punitive damages in Wisconsin. This was not a mistake or an oversight. The jury concluded the company was aware its conduct was substantially certain to harm workers and chose to continue anyway. | high |
Worker Exploitation
Who bore the cost of Pabst’s choices · 5 points
▼
| 01 | Gerald Lorbiecki was a union steamfitter and member of Steamfitters Union Local 601. He spent his working life installing and repairing industrial pipe systems. His labor built and maintained the facilities that generated profits for companies like Pabst. | medium |
| 02 | The standard method for replacing insulated pipe in the 1970s, the method used by Lorbiecki and his fellow steamfitters at Pabst, involved physically chipping and sawing asbestos-laden insulation off existing pipes. According to expert testimony, a major repair job required tearing off thousands of pounds of insulation, generating enormous quantities of airborne dust. | high |
| 03 | Lorbiecki’s colleague Larry Schroeder testified that steamfitters’ clothing would often be coated in dust from the insulation work, meaning workers were visibly covered in the material that would eventually kill some of them. This was the normal, unprotected working condition at Pabst’s brewery. | high |
| 04 | By using independent contractors, Pabst attempted to shield itself from liability for the workplace conditions it owned, controlled, and profited from. The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected this legal maneuver, ruling that Pabst’s duty under the safe-place statute could not be delegated away. | high |
| 05 | Lorbiecki died of mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lungs and other organs with an average survival of 12 to 21 months from diagnosis. It is caused almost exclusively by asbestos exposure. There is no cure. | high |
Corporate Accountability Failures
Pabst’s fight to avoid responsibility · 5 points
▼
| 01 | Pabst pursued summary judgment before trial, arguing it owed no duty to Lorbiecki because he worked for an independent contractor. The company sought to have the case dismissed on a legal technicality rather than confront the evidence that it knowingly exposed workers to a deadly carcinogen. | medium |
| 02 | After the jury verdict, Pabst moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and appealed all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, continuing to fight accountability at every stage. The company forced the Lorbiecki family to pursue this case for years after Gerald had already died. | high |
| 03 | Before trial, Pabst successfully had Lorbiecki’s common-law negligence claim dismissed, leaving only the safe-place statute claim. The company exploited the narrower scope of that statute to limit potential exposure even while fighting the core allegation that it had poisoned a worker. | medium |
| 04 | On appeal, Pabst successfully argued for a narrower cap on punitive damages, reducing the cap from two times the full jury verdict to two times only the compensatory damages for which Pabst alone was legally responsible. The company reduced its punitive exposure by more than half through legal argument after already being found to have intentionally disregarded a worker’s rights. | medium |
| 05 | The final judgment entered against Pabst was approximately $6.99 million, a fraction of the $20 million the jury believed was necessary to punish the company’s conduct. Statutory damage caps effectively transformed a $20 million punitive verdict into a far smaller financial consequence for a major corporation. | high |
Exploiting Delay
How time worked against the victim · 4 points
▼
| 01 | Mesothelioma has a latency period of 20 to 50 years after asbestos exposure. Lorbiecki worked at the Pabst brewery in the mid-1970s and was not diagnosed until 2017, more than four decades later. This delay meant Pabst faced legal consequences only long after the executives and managers who made the decisions had moved on. | high |
| 02 | Because of the long gap between exposure and diagnosis, the primary witness, Lorbiecki himself, was too ill to testify before trial and died before the proceedings concluded. Pabst benefited from the biological delay that asbestos disease imposes on its victims. | high |
| 03 | The lawsuit was filed in 2018, the case went to trial at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, was appealed to the Court of Appeals (decided in 2024), and then reviewed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court (decided April 15, 2026). The Lorbiecki family spent years in litigation while Pabst exhausted every available procedural avenue. | medium |
| 04 | Carol Lorbiecki, Gerald’s wife, was substituted as a plaintiff after Gerald died and then herself died before the case reached the Supreme Court. The case outlived both the primary victim and his surviving spouse. | high |
Timeline of Events
1963–1974
Sprinkmann Sons makes weekly deliveries of asbestos-containing insulation to Pabst’s Milwaukee brewery, supplying hundreds of pounds and thousands of feet of asbestos pipe insulation over more than a decade.
June 1971
Pabst circulates an internal memo summarizing OSHA regulations that specifically identify asbestosis as an occupational illness. The company also sends a memo to outside contractors confirming OSHA rules apply at its facility and requiring daily area inspections.
Mid-1970s
Gerald Lorbiecki, a member of Steamfitters Union Local 601, works at the Pabst brewery as an employee of an independent contractor, cutting and replacing asbestos-insulated pipes. Colleague Larry Schroeder later testifies they worked together for approximately four months.
1975
New asbestos pipe insulation is federally banned. Pabst’s brewery still contains miles of existing asbestos insulation. No abatement is begun.
1986
OSHA cites Pabst for broken asbestos pipe insulation found inside the brewery, fifteen years after the company first acknowledged in writing that airborne asbestos causes occupational disease.
Early 1990s
Pabst finally begins documented asbestos abatement at its brewery, approximately two decades after the company confirmed in writing that asbestos posed a serious health risk to workers.
2017
Gerald Lorbiecki is diagnosed with mesothelioma, a deadly asbestos-related cancer, more than 40 years after his exposure at the Pabst brewery. He files suit against Pabst and numerous other companies.
2018
The lawsuit (Case No. 2018CV4971) is filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Lorbiecki dies before trial; his estate continues the case.
2020
Circuit Court Judge Christopher R. Foley denies Pabst’s motion for summary judgment on the safe-place statute claim, finding that asbestos in the air is an unsafe condition and that genuine issues of material fact require trial.
Trial (Circuit Court)
The jury finds Pabst liable, apportions 22% of total fault to Pabst (plus an additional 20% imputed from contractor Sprinkmann), and awards $6.5 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages, finding Pabst acted in “intentional disregard” of Lorbiecki’s rights.
2024
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals reviews the case. Carol Lorbiecki dies during the appeals process. Scott Lorbiecki, Gerald and Carol’s son, is substituted as plaintiff.
April 15, 2026
The Wisconsin Supreme Court issues its decision in Estate of Lorbiecki v. Pabst Brewing Company (2026 WI 12), upholding Pabst’s liability and the punitive-damages award while narrowing the cap to approximately $4.66 million based on Pabst’s share of compensatory damages. Final judgment against Pabst stands at approximately $6.99 million.
Direct Quotes from the Legal Record
COURT RECORD
Pabst’s own corporate representative on the scope of the asbestos problem
Core Allegations
“Many miles” of asbestos-insulated pipe throughout the brewery.
💡 Pabst’s own corporate representative confirmed at trial that the brewery was permeated with asbestos insulation on a massive scale. This was not a minor or isolated hazard. The company knew the full extent of the problem because they put it there.
COURT RECORD
Expert testimony on the scale of asbestos removal work
Core Allegations
“Thousands of pounds of insulation [would have to] be torn off of pipes in a major repair job.”
💡 Every major pipe repair at the Pabst brewery involved physically tearing away enormous quantities of asbestos insulation, releasing it into the air that workers breathed. This was not incidental contact with asbestos. It was massive, sustained, unavoidable exposure.
COURT RECORD
How steamfitters removed asbestos insulation
Worker Exploitation
Workers chipped insulation off existing pipes using “a hammer or chisel, a saw, whatever you had in your hand; a screwdriver, [or] pocket knife,” causing dust to become airborne and “fly around.”
💡 There was no protective equipment, no ventilation protocol, no wet-suppression method. Workers beat asbestos apart with hand tools and breathed the results. This was the standard, unprotected practice inside Pabst’s brewery.
COURT RECORD
Pabst’s 1971 internal memo confirming health risks
Regulatory Failures
By June 1971, Pabst had summarized OSHA regulations in an internal memorandum that “specifically identified asbestosis as an occupational illness.”
💡 Pabst put asbestos risk in writing internally in 1971. They named the disease. They filed the memo. And then they kept buying asbestos insulation and kept sending unprotected workers into the brewery for decades.
COURT RECORD
Asbestos deliveries to the brewery
Profit Over People
Between 1963 and 1974 alone, Sprinkmann’s records reflect “hundreds of pounds, thousands of feet of asbestos-containing insulation going into the bottle house.”
💡 This was not accidental contamination. Pabst systematically purchased and installed a lethal material on an industrial scale for over a decade, knowing by 1971 at the latest that it caused deadly disease.
COURT RECORD
The circuit court on the strength of the evidence against Pabst
Corporate Accountability
Schroeder’s testimony was “devastating to Pabst.”
💡 The trial judge, having heard all the evidence, used this word. Not merely probative, not just credible. Devastating. A fellow worker’s firsthand account of what Pabst’s brewery was like destroyed the company’s claim of innocence.
SUPREME COURT
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on the basis for punitive damages
Corporate Accountability
The jury could have concluded that Pabst “continued to purchase more asbestos insulation, failed to warn workers or adopt additional safety protocols, did not engage in asbestos remediation for many years, and was cited by OSHA in 1986 for having broken asbestos-containing pipe insulation in the brewery.”
💡 The Supreme Court enumerated exactly what Pabst chose not to do, over decades, while workers breathed asbestos. Each item on this list was a decision. Each decision was a choice to protect costs over lives.
SUPREME COURT
The safe-place statute’s non-delegable duty
Regulatory Failures
An employer or owner “cannot assert that another to whom he has allegedly delegated the duty is to be substituted as the primary defendant in his stead for a violation of safe place provisions.”
💡 Pabst’s central defense was: we hired independent contractors, so it’s their problem. Wisconsin law has explicitly rejected this argument for decades. A company cannot outsource its legal and moral duty to keep premises safe for the workers it brings there.
Commentary
What exactly did Pabst do wrong?
▼
Pabst owned a brewery filled with miles of asbestos-insulated pipe. They knew by 1971 that airborne asbestos caused serious illness. They kept purchasing asbestos insulation. They sent workers, employed through independent contractors, into that environment without warnings, without protective equipment, without any safety protocols for asbestos. They did not begin asbestos abatement for approximately two more decades. An OSHA citation in 1986 documented broken asbestos insulation on the premises. Pabst knew, documented, and ignored the hazard that killed Gerald Lorbiecki.
Is this lawsuit legitimate? Was the verdict justified?
▼
Yes. The verdict was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a 5-2 decision, with the majority finding sufficient evidence to support both liability and punitive damages. The Court held that a reasonable jury could conclude Pabst was aware airborne asbestos was harming workers and chose to do nothing. That is the legal definition of “intentional disregard” of a person’s rights. Two dissenting justices argued on procedural grounds about summary judgment review standards, not on the underlying merits of Pabst’s conduct toward workers. The core finding: Pabst knew, failed to act, and a man died.
Why did the punitive damages get reduced from $20 million?
▼
Wisconsin law caps punitive damages at twice the compensatory damages a plaintiff can actually recover. Since Pabst was the only defendant remaining at trial, only the compensatory damages attributable to Pabst could be used to calculate the cap. The jury found $6.5 million total in compensatory damages spread across multiple parties, but Pabst was only legally responsible for $2.3 million of that. The cap was therefore set at twice $2.3 million, or approximately $4.66 million in punitive damages. Combined with compensatory damages, the final judgment against Pabst was roughly $6.99 million. The jury’s moral judgment ($20 million) was significantly constrained by a statutory cap designed in large part by corporate lobbying.
Why did Pabst try to avoid responsibility using independent contractors?
▼
This is a classic corporate liability-shifting strategy. By hiring workers through independent contractors rather than directly, companies attempt to create legal distance between themselves and the workers whose health they endanger. The argument is: “We didn’t employ those workers, so their employer is responsible for their safety, not us.” Wisconsin’s safe-place statute was specifically designed to prevent exactly this maneuver. The duty to maintain safe premises is “non-delegable,” meaning no contract, no legal structure, and no corporate arrangement can transfer it away from the owner of the property. Pabst owned the brewery. Pabst owned the asbestos. Pabst bore the duty.
Lorbiecki also worked at other facilities. Why is Pabst specifically responsible?
▼
Lorbiecki worked at many facilities over his career, and the jury apportioned fault among multiple parties reflecting that reality. Pabst was assigned 22% of the total liability (plus an additional 20% from contractor Sprinkmann that was imputed to Pabst due to the non-delegable duty rule). Pabst is responsible for the harm that occurred on its own property, under conditions it owned and knew about. The existence of other negligent parties does not diminish Pabst’s responsibility for the exposure that occurred in its own facility under its watch.
How does this case connect to the broader pattern of corporate asbestos harm?
▼
Pabst’s conduct was not exceptional. It was standard. For decades, companies across every industry that used asbestos insulation knew the material was lethal, continued to use it, and relied on a legal system that made it difficult and expensive for workers to prove the connection between their disease and their exposure. By the time mesothelioma presents, often 30 to 50 years after exposure, key witnesses are gone, companies have changed hands, and victims are too sick to fight. Asbestos disease has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and the corporations that profited from cheap, readily available asbestos products paid a tiny fraction of that cost.
Does this ruling set a precedent?
▼
Yes, in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision clarifies several important points: that Tatera’s general rule limiting liability to independent contractors’ employees does not apply to safe-place statute claims; that a building owner who retains meaningful control over premises cannot escape liability by claiming they did not control the details of the contractor’s work; and that the cap on punitive damages is tied to compensatory damages actually recoverable from the defendant, not the total jury verdict. It also resolved a question about appellate review of summary judgment denials. This decision reinforces that Wisconsin property owners have a non-delegable duty to those who work on their premises.
What can I do to prevent this from happening again?
▼
Several concrete actions matter. Support and vote for candidates who strengthen OSHA enforcement and expand worker protections. Advocate against state and federal tort reform laws that cap punitive damages, as these reduce the financial deterrent against corporate misconduct. Support unions: organized workers have historically been the most effective force for enforcing safety standards on the job. If you work in or near environments that may contain asbestos, know your rights under the OSHA asbestos standards. If you or someone you know develops mesothelioma or another asbestos-related disease, consult an attorney who specializes in occupational disease because the legal window to bring a claim is time-limited. And share cases like this one. Corporate accountability depends on public awareness.
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