A valve making company has filed for bankruptcy protection as the expense of meeting legal costs for ongoing asbestos lawsuits has exceeded the profits the company made in the second quarter.

The Leslie Controls unit of Circor International Inc. (CIR) is facing asbestos lawsuits worth $18.7 million for products, such as control valves, made with asbestos used in U.S. Navy ships between the 1940s and 1980s. This caused asbestos-related diseases, according to the Wall Street Journal. As a result, CIR has to pay millions of dollars to defend Leslie.

Every year, 2,000 to 3,000 Americans are diagnosed with mesothelioma or a rare form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, as well as lung cancer and asbestosis, as per the statics released by the National Cancer Institute.

Circor’s chairman and CEO, Bill Higgins, stated that “The cost of this defense has exceeded the profits generated by Leslie’s operations, and we have been considering for some time a range of strategic alternatives that would enable us to permanently eliminate this risk.” In the second quarter of last year, Leslie Controls accounted for just 5.5 percent of CIR’s total revenues. CIR has set up a $75 million trust to pay for the asbestos claims in the present and in the future.