Akron is Rubber City — Goodyear, Firestone, B.F. Goodrich, and General Tire built the world’s tire industry here, and the curing rooms, mills, and boiler houses ran hot. To the south, Canton carried the Timken steel-and-bearing works and the Hoover and Diebold plants. These were reportedly asbestos-intensive operations across the trades for most of the century.
Ohio asbestos cases are filed in the Court of Common Pleas of the county of proper venue — there is no single statewide asbestos court, though Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) has historically carried Ohio’s largest asbestos docket. Ohio allows two years from a mesothelioma or asbestos-cancer diagnosis to file (Ohio Rev. Code § 2305.10), and two years from the date of death for a wrongful-death claim (§ 2125.02).