C. L. Hite to Dr. Kenneth W. Smith on the X-Rays of Marrero Worker Steve Cedotal (1966)

A one-page memo of April 5, 1966, from C. L. Hite at J-M's Marrero, Louisiana, plant to Dr. Kenneth W. Smith, J-M's medical director, sending the X-rays of Steve Cedotal, a machine tender in the Shingle Department, and asking Smith to decide "whether this man should be removed from this job." Hite wrote that this was "the employee who Dr. Logan frightened by informing the employee that he should get off the job immediately." Since then, he added, the plant had told Dr. Gidman and Dr. Logan "that any further information of this type regarding any employee should be told to us and that the Company will make the determination as to what will be done with the employee in question."

What it shows

The memo records a plant instruction to the doctors who examined its workers: findings about a man's health were to go to the company, not to the man. Dr. Logan's advice to Cedotal is described as having "frightened" him, and the decision whether he stayed on the job was sent to headquarters. The same question, whether workers should be told of their own diagnoses, comes up again in J-M's union talks in 1968 (union-management meeting notes, 1968).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Letter from Hite (Marrero) to K.W. Smith, 4/5/66 regarding claim of Steve Cedotal, a plantworker at Marrero. "This is the employee who Dr. Logan frightened by informing the employee that he should get off the job immediately. Since that time, we have told both Dr. Gidman and Dr. Logan, that any further information of this type regarding any employee should be told to us and that the Company will make the determination as to what will be done with the employee in question."