Detroit built the automobile, and the automobile ran on asbestos. Ford’s River Rouge complex, the GM and Chrysler plants, and the Downriver steel mills — Great Lakes Steel and McLouth at Ecorse and Trenton — filled the metro with foundries, forges, and assembly lines, while the Wyandotte chemical works and the Monroe and Trenton Channel power plants ringed it. For most of the twentieth century these operations reportedly relied on asbestos insulation, gaskets, brake linings, and refractory, and the trades who built and maintained them were reportedly exposed for full careers.
Michigan allows three years from a mesothelioma or asbestos-cancer diagnosis — measured from when the disease was or should have been discovered — to file a personal-injury claim (MCL 600.5805). A wrongful-death claim must generally be brought within three years of death (MCL 600.5852), but it cannot revive a claim that had already lapsed during the person’s lifetime, so the timeline is worth confirming early. Cases are filed in the county Circuit Court of proper venue; Michigan has no statewide asbestos MDL, and Wayne County (Detroit) has historically carried the state’s largest asbestos docket.