If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma in Michigan, you need a lawyer who knows this state’s plants, trades, and courts — not a call center that will refer your case somewhere else. I’ve been doing this work since 1988, and I’ve been admitted in Michigan since 1997.
I’m Lee W. Davis. I began working in asbestos litigation as a paralegal in 1988, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1996, Michigan in 1997, and West Virginia in 2002. I spent 25 years at one of the nation’s leading asbestos litigation firms — a firm with a major Michigan practice — where I became a partner before opening my own office in 2013. Michigan asbestos cases have been part of my working life for nearly three decades.
When you call, you talk to me. No intake screeners, no case managers, no handoffs. And if you can’t travel, I’ll come to you.
Call (412) 781-0525 for a free, no-obligation case evaluation.
Why Michigan Has So Many Mesothelioma Cases
Michigan’s industrial backbone — automotive, steel, chemical, shipbuilding, and power generation — ran on asbestos for most of the twentieth century. Brake and clutch friction products, furnace and coke-oven refractory, boiler and turbine insulation, gaskets, and pipe covering exposed generations of Michigan workers, usually without a single warning.
Mesothelioma appears 20 to 50 years after exposure. A diagnosis in 2026 usually traces to work done in the 1960s, ’70s, or ’80s — and reconstructing that history is exactly what I do.
Michigan Job Sites Linked to Asbestos Exposure
My Michigan cases have come from the state’s industrial corridors, including:
- Automotive: Ford Rouge, the GM and Chrysler plant networks, and the brake, clutch, and gasket friction products that exposed line workers and mechanics statewide
- Steel and foundries: Great Lakes Steel and the Zug Island complex at River Rouge and Ecorse, plus foundries across southeast Michigan
- Chemical: Dow Chemical’s Midland complex and the plants around Saginaw and the Tri-Cities
- Power generation: coal and nuclear stations statewide, including Big Rock Point
- Shipbuilding and Great Lakes maritime work
- Macomb County and the Detroit-area trades that built and maintained it all
If your job site isn’t listed, that means nothing about your case. Work histories are reconstructed through employment records, union records, co-worker testimony, and the exposure record built across decades of Michigan asbestos litigation.
Browse the full directory: Asbestos Job Sites in Michigan
The Trades Hit Hardest in Michigan
Auto workers and mechanics. Friction products — brakes, clutches — were asbestos well into the 1980s. Line workers, brake specialists, and garage mechanics breathed the dust every day.
Bricklayers and refractory workers. Industrial furnaces, kilns, coke ovens, and boilers at sites like Zug Island, Ford Rouge, and Great Lakes Steel were lined and insulated with asbestos-containing refractory and block.
Pipefitters, millwrights, boilermakers, insulators, and electricians. The trades that built and maintained Michigan’s plants worked in the middle of the dust — and union records from those locals are often the backbone of the exposure case.
Their families. Take-home exposure on work clothes, boots, and hair gave spouses and children real, compensable asbestos disease. Read more about take-home asbestos cases.
Filing a Michigan Mesothelioma Claim: What Actually Happens
1. Free consultation — and a fast start. You don’t need every record to begin. The strongest early anchors are simple: where you were treated, your employer names and approximate years, and your trade. I build from there.
2. Investigation. I map your work history to the asbestos products documented at your job sites — which insulation, which refractory, which gaskets, which decades. Most delays in these cases come from the work history, not the medical proof, so organizing it early is how a case stays on pace.
3. Filing. Depending on the evidence, your case may involve lawsuits against solvent companies, claims against asbestos bankruptcy trust funds, or both — most of my clients have claims in both categories, and the trusts pay on their own schedules, separate from any lawsuit.
4. Resolution. Most Michigan mesothelioma cases settle without trial. Settlement value turns on the diagnosis and its stage, the strength of the exposure documentation, and the earnings and family circumstances of the person diagnosed. I’ll give you an honest assessment, not an inflated promise. No two cases are alike; past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
How long do I have to file in Michigan?
Generally three years from diagnosis — not from the exposure decades ago. Wrongful death claims run on their own clock from the date of death. Trust funds set separate deadlines. The earlier we start, the more compensation sources stay open — and the easier the decades-old evidence is to assemble.
What does it cost?
Nothing up front, ever. Contingent fee — I’m paid only if you recover. Consultations are free.
Michigan Wrongful Death Claims
If your husband, wife, or parent died of mesothelioma or asbestos lung cancer, Michigan law allows the family to pursue wrongful death claims — even when the diagnosis came shortly before death and no lawsuit was ever started. The most important work in these cases often happens after death: tracing the exposure to identifiable products, suppliers, and premises through the records your loved one left behind and the co-workers who remember. Most of that work falls on me, not on your family. More on mesothelioma wrongful death claims.
Why Michigan Families Choose Lee W. Davis
Thirty-eight years in asbestos litigation. Started as a paralegal in 1988; my entire legal career has been in this field — the job sites, the products, the defendants, the medicine.
Admitted in Michigan since 1997. Nearly three decades handling Michigan asbestos matters — not a pro hac vice visitor, and not a referral service.
Big-firm training, one-lawyer attention. 25 years and a partnership at one of the nation’s leading asbestos litigation firms before opening my own practice in 2013 — because families facing mesothelioma deserve the lawyer, not a case number.
Tri-state reach. Pennsylvania (1996), Michigan (1997), West Virginia (2002) — Michigan workers’ careers crossed state lines, and their cases often do too.
Direct attorney contact. You get my number. You speak with me. Home visits are never a problem.
Recognized by peers. Member, National Trial Lawyers Top 100.
Talk to Me Before You Decide Anything
Michigan sees heavy mesothelioma advertising — TV firms and call centers competing for your signature. Before you sign with anyone, call me and get a straight answer about what your case is actually worth pursuing and where. The call is free, the advice is honest, and there’s no pressure.
Law Offices of Lee W. Davis, Esquire, PLLC
5239 Butler Street #201, Pittsburgh, PA 15201 — serving all of Michigan, including Detroit and surrounding areas
(412) 781-0525 | info@leewdavis.com
Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Home visits available.