Lucas County is the heart of the Glass City — the Owens-Illinois and Libbey-Owens-Ford glassworks, the Jeep assembly plant, and the Maumee River refineries at Oregon. The furnaces, tanks, and process piping of these operations reportedly relied on asbestos-containing materials for most of the twentieth 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).