Denis’ Story

For 37 years, Denis worked in the dust and grime of New York City’s power plants, breathing air laced with asbestos every day. He retired in 1999, built a quiet life of golf and gardening, and watched his grandchildren grow up. Then, in 2024, the disease that had claimed nearly every man he once worked alongside finally found him too.

Denis was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma at 81 years old. By working with top mesothelioma law firm Simmons Hanly Conroy, he and his family secured the compensation needed to cover his ongoing treatment — and to keep making memories while there’s still time.

Denis’ story begins in rural Ireland, where he grew up working on the family farm. At 21, he set out for New York City. In December 1964, he took a janitorial job at an energy company and was steadily promoted: General Utility Mechanic, Mechanic-B, and finally to Mechanic-A in 1969, a position he held until retirement.

Denis worked at 15 power plants throughout New York City and beyond, including the Indian Point Nuclear Powerhouse upstate. He often drove 2 hours each way, leaving home at 4 a.m. and returning late at night.

Through it all, Denis built a life with his Irish-born wife Sheila, raising 2 children in New York. He fully retired in 2001. In the years that followed, he became an avid golfer, tended his garden, and enjoyed spending time with his 6 grandchildren.

His perfect day, he says, was simple: “Plenty of sunshine and playing golf.”

Until his friends started getting sick, Denis’ family never fully understood the danger of his work. The power plants were dusty environments where asbestos surrounded nearly every boiler, pump, and turbine. After long shifts, he came home “just filthy,” covered in dust and sweat.

“He was in a work gang of 350 men,” Deirdre explains. “He’s going to be 83 next week, and only a handful of those men are still alive. Over the years, they’ve all died from work-related exposures, mesothelioma and things like that.”

Denis did not learn about mesothelioma until after he stopped working, when a former coworker told him. By the time Denis and his coworkers learned that asbestos could cause cancer, they had already been exposed for decades.

“We knew there was asbestos,” Denis says. “We didn’t know it was dangerous.“

When he learned about mesothelioma, he started getting chest X-rays every 2 years through a B Reader screening program in New Jersey. “It was on our radar,” Deirdre says. That vigilance, his doctor would later tell him, may well have saved his life.

“I would tell anybody who has worked with asbestos or around asbestos to have an X-ray every year,” Denis says. “It may save your life.”

The first sign came in the summer of 2024, while Denis was working in his garden. “I noticed that my legs got quite weak as I proceeded to plant seeds,” he recalls. He told Deirdre, who immediately called his doctor.

Within days, X-rays at St. Francis Hospital revealed something concerning in his lung. A follow-up PET scan confirmed the worst. On July 3, 2024, Denis was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, the most common form of the disease.

The diagnosis confirmed that the exposures he experienced while working in New York City’s power plants had caused his illness. For the family, the news was devastating but not entirely surprising.

“I remember when the nurse practitioner called to say the type of cancer he had,” Deirdre says. “I had to sit down. Because we knew that meant like 6 months. So, we feel blessed that we’ve had him for almost 2 years.”

Sheila describes the moment with quiet weight: “It was a big shock and a big disappointment. But we realize how lucky we are that he didn’t get it so early in life, because most of his coworkers are gone.”

Denis began an intensive mesothelioma treatment regimen at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Every 3 weeks, he travels into the city for chemotherapy. Every 2 or 3 months, he undergoes scans to monitor the disease’s progression.

Over nearly 2 years, he’s cycled through radiation, immunotherapy, and now chemotherapy after the immunotherapy stopped working.

Sheila has watched those side effects firsthand: “He’d feel good for a couple of days, and then he’d be nauseous and dizzy and grumpy, and then he was okay for a few days, until the next treatment came along.”

Even so, Denis remains remarkably active when he is feeling good. Some days he is up on a ladder pruning his pear tree. The next day, he is on his hands and knees weeding.

“I think you’re faking this,” Deirdre teases him. “You don’t really have cancer.”

That ability to stay active is something Denis and his family don’t take for granted. His doctor told him that just 2 years earlier, the same diagnosis would have given him only 6 months. Medical advances and early detection have given him time he wouldn’t otherwise have had.

The decision to pursue legal action came quickly. Denis’ son is a lawyer and connected the family with a mesothelioma specialist the moment the diagnosis was confirmed. “His friend came to my house and told me all about mesothelioma and past lawsuits and compensation to pay for my medical expenses,” Denis recalls.

For Denis, the rationale was clear: The asbestos companies had known about the danger for decades and chose profit over worker safety.

“Those manufacturers were told back in the late 1800s that asbestos was bad and could cause cancer, and they continued to manufacture their products,” he explained. “And today, they are paying compensation for their negligence.”

To anyone who might dismiss filing a lawsuit as too much trouble, Denis is direct: “I would say that they’re very foolish. The companies that manufactured those products made a profit and didn’t care about them.”

And if he could speak to those companies directly? “They should be very regretful and say sorry to all who have already been diagnosed with the same disease as I have,” he’d tell them.

The legal process moved with remarkable speed, which matters in mesothelioma cases. Denis was diagnosed in July 2024, signed with Simmons Hanly Conroy in August, gave his deposition in September, and began receiving mesothelioma settlements by February 2025.

“It went really smoothly, and it was good that it was so fast because my father was still alive,” Deirdre says. “So he was able to enjoy some of the compensation.”

The financial impact has been profound. The settlement has covered Denis’ ongoing chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, and imaging scans — costs that would otherwise be crushing during retirement.

“It costs a fortune every month,” Sheila says. “To know that the medical will be paid for the rest of his life, it’s a big help.”

But the settlement has done more than pay medical bills. It has allowed the family to keep making memories: annual reunions, trips to the house Denis built in 2005 on his family’s property in Ireland, and travel between treatment cycles.

It’s also given him the opportunity to leave something behind for his grandchildren, helping with future college expenses, first homes, and other milestones. “They’re going to have significant compensation for losing their grandfather, and they’ll never forget him,” Deirdre says.

The family’s experience with Simmons Hanly Conroy stood in sharp contrast to an earlier experience with another firm, where they were passed from person to person and eventually stopped hearing back. With Simmons Hanly Conroy, things felt different from the start.

Two attorneys, one focused on litigation and the other on preparing Denis and gathering background information, worked closely with the family throughout. “When we got in touch with Simmons Hanly Conroy, we never spoke to anybody else ever again,” Deirdre says.

Just as importantly, the firm came to them. Denis never had to travel into the city. Attorneys visited the family’s home in person, and depositions and meetings happened over Zoom.

Denis credits the firm with making the process effortless at the hardest time of his family’s life: “Any question I would ask, I would get a 100% correct answer. I could make a phone call, and they were right back to me.”

For Sheila, the experience transformed what she had feared into something she is deeply grateful for. “The thought of having lawyers and suing was daunting, but it was a big help. There’s no other firm like it.”

Denis’ recommendation is the most direct of all: “I would recommend the same law firm that represented me. They were fantastic. Their name was Simmons Hanly Conroy, and they were excellent.”