MISSOULA, Mont. —

A federal jury ruled Wednesday that a health clinic in a Montana town where hundreds of people have died from asbestos exposure submitted 337 false asbestos claims that made patients eligible for Medicare and other benefits they shouldn't have received.

The seven-person jury said that the fraudulent claims caused more than $1 million in damage to the government.

The case focused on the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby, Montana. BNSF Railway filed a lawsuit against the clinic under the federal False Claims Act in 2019.

The railroad company owned by billionaire Warren Buffett is also a defendant in numerous lawsuits over its own role in the town's contamination. In 2020, Montana's Supreme Court found BNSF liable for shipping asbestos-tainted vermiculite from a nearby mine through Libby.

The clinic and its high-profile doctor, Brad Black, have been at the forefront of efforts to help residents of the town, which came to national prominence when it was declared a deadly Superfund site two decades ago.

The jury's finding leaves the clinic subject to additional penalties. Under the False Claims Act, the railway could be eligible for 15% to 25% of any amount recovered by the government.

CARD and its attorneys had denied it made false medical claims on behalf of patients, arguing its diagnoses were in line with requirements of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which included special provisions for the Libby victims.

"CARD was doing exactly what the law said," clinic attorney Tim Bechtold said earlier Wednesday during closing arguments that followed 11 days of testimony.

BNSF's lawsuit alleged CARD submitted more than 300 false claims on behalf of patients without getting outside confirmation that they had asbestos-related disease. The company also said 1,369 people received federal benefits with no disease diagnosis.

Dr. Black and the CARD clinic have certified more than 3,400 people with asbestos-related diseases, according to court documents.

Asbestos-related diseases can range from a thickening of a person's lung cavity, hampering breathing, to deadly cancer. Under the 2009 federal health law, victims of asbestos exposure in the Libby area are eligible for taxpayer-funded services including Medicare, housekeeping, travel to medical appointments and disability benefits for those who can't work.

Dr. Black is a pediatrician by specialty and has served as the Lincoln County Health Officer. He has previously said the ailments caused by the type of asbestos found in Libby are difficult to detect and can be missed by outside radiologists.

BNSF attorney Adam Duerk criticized Black's stated ability to perceive early signs of asbestosis disease that others missed.

"That's not the practice of medicine, that's the practice of roulette," Duerk said. "When you see it, when you're certain it's there, that's when you diagnose, not before."

Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, of Montana, helped craft the Libby provision in the health law. He said in depositions with attorneys that the clinic's practice of declaring some patients eligible for benefits without confirmation of their condition from a secondary source such as an X-ray was legitimate.

However, U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen barred Baucus's statements from the trial, saying it was the court's role to decide whether the law was followed.

At least 400 people have been killed by asbestos-related disease in the Libby area, according to health officials. Because of the long latency period for those diseases, symptoms can take decades to develop.

The tainted vermiculite came from a mine owned by the Maryland-based chemical company W.R. Grace. It polluted the Libby area over decades, including at a BNSF railway yard in the heart of the town of about 3,000 people.

Cleanup work began in 2000 after media reports of widespread health problems spurred a federal investigation. The EPA years later declared the agency's first public health emergency in the town. More than $600 million was spent to remove vermiculite from thousands of properties in Libby and surrounding communities.

Scientists say exposure to even a minuscule amount of asbestos can cause lung problems.

The case was sealed under court order for two years until the U.S. attorney's office of Montana declined to intervene. Officials have not given a reason.

Asbestos-tainted vermiculite was used as construction material in Libby and it remains inside many houses, where it was used as insulation. It was also shipped across the country by BNSF and installed in millions of homes.

Lawsuits against companies and officials over the contamination in Libby have resulted in large settlements and awards for victims.

More than 2,000 Montana residents reached settlements with the state totaling $68 million for failing to warn them about the dangers of asbestos exposure. In February 2022, a jury awarded an Oregon man $36.5 million in a lawsuit against W.R. Grace's insurer.

With millions of Texas residents still without power amid frigid temperatures, conservative commentators have falsely claimed that wind turbines and solar energy were primarily to blame.

“We should never build another wind turbine in Texas,” read a Tuesday Facebook post from Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. “The experiment failed big time.”

“This is a perfect example of the need for reliable energy sources like natural gas & coal,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, on Tuesday.

In reality, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as frozen wind turbines and solar panels, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference Tuesday.

Still a variety of misleading claims spread on social media around renewable energy, with wind turbines and the Green New Deal getting much of the attention.

A viral photo of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was shared with claims it showed a “chemical” solution being applied to one of the massive wind generators in Texas. The only problem? The photo was taken in Sweden years ago, not in the U.S. in 2021. The helicopter sprayed hot water onto the wind turbine, not chemicals.

Other social media users, including Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, puzzlingly labeled the Green New Deal as the culprit. Boebert tweeted on Monday that the proposal was “proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable.”

But the Green New Deal is irrelevant, as no version of it exists in Texas or nationwide, said Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

“It’s really natural gas and coal and nuclear that are providing the bulk of the electricity and that’s the bulk of the cause of the blackouts,” Jacobson told The Associated Press.

ERCOT said Tuesday that of the 45,000 total megawatts of power that were offline statewide, about 30,000 consisted of thermal sources — gas, coal and nuclear plants — and 16,000 came from renewable sources.

On top of that, while Texas has ramped up wind energy in recent years, the state still relies on wind power for only about 25% of its total electricity, according to ERCOT data.

“It’s not like we were relying on it to ride us through this event,” Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin, told the AP. “Nor would it have been able to save us even if it were operating at 100% capacity right now. We just don’t have enough of it.”

The agency confirmed that wellhead freeze-offs and other issues curtailing supply in natural gas systems were primarily to blame for new outages on Tuesday, after severe winter weather caused failures across multiple fuel types in recent days.

Renewable energy is a popular scapegoat for new problems as more frequent extreme weather events strain infrastructure, according to Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

“It’s easy to focus on the thing that you can see changing as the source of why an outcome is changing,” Grubert told the AP. “The reality is that managing our systems is becoming more difficult. And that’s something that is easy to blame on the reaction to it, but it’s not actually the root cause.”

CINCINNATI —

A local professor who studies misinformation about vaccines on social media is adding new insights into the concerns by President Biden that the myths are “costing lives.”

“There are groups of individuals that are doing the work to try to create misinformation, propaganda for various reasons, even monetary reasons,” said Northern Kentucky University's Dr. Traian Marius Truta.

Truta is a professor of computer science, and since 2018, has studied vaccine misinformation spread by social media. Truta said determining exactly how much of an impact misinformation has is hard to quantify.

“Social media plays a huge role in spreading misinformation however, social media also plays an important role in eliminating misinformation,” Truta said.

One myth that gained traction on social media was that the vaccine had a tracking device, another myth claimed that the vaccine made people magnetic. Truta said the most ridiculous claims are believed by fewer people.

“There are some, but very few. I doubt there are very many that are not taking their vaccine because of those claims,” Truta said.

Social media is only one part of the complex misinformation issue. Even if it is hard to measure, the impact is apparent to many doctors.

“The medical community and the scientific communities are trying to get good scientific information out there but it’s a constant uphill battle when things are coming from all different sources that are untrue,” said TriHealth medical director for infectious diseases Dr. Stephen Blatt.

Overdramatizing actual side effects is another form of misinformation and is sometimes very effective. Blatt said false claims that sound like they could be real are also hard to stop.

“One of the ones that’s come up recently is that the COVID vaccine interferes with fertility in men in women. That’s not true. The vaccines are very safe, even in pregnant women and they don’t cause infertility and that’s important to know,” Blatt said.

President Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy are calling on social media platforms to do more to reign in misinformation about vaccines.

“We know that health misinformation harms people’s health. It costs them their lives,” Murthy said.