Clarence P. Green to Mike Taber on Refusing Admissions in the Hirst Claim (1981)

A two-page letter of April 30, 1981, from Clarence P. Green of the Oklahoma City law firm Green and James to Mike Taber, a Johns-Manville attorney in Denver, on the claim of Minerva Hirst as administratrix of the estate of Wayne Raymond Hirst. Green had received 139 interrogatories from the plaintiff's lawyer and wanted "to take a hard line" on objections. Many items, he wrote, were really requests for admission, and he had marked several "no" "even though numerous of the items are things that we could admit," reasoning that they were matters "about which plaintiff will have to produce a witness with or without the admission and that the sanctions, if any, would be small."

What it shows

Green acknowledged, "I realize that this approach is unorthodoxed and am willing to be advised and counseled." The letter shows J-M's outside counsel proposing to deny facts the company could admit, leaving the plaintiff to prove them.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

In a letter to Mike Taber, re Claimant Minerva Hirst, 4/30/81, Clarence P. Green of Green & James, states that he plans to take a hard line on objection to plaintiff's interrogatories. He found that numerous items in plaintiff's interrogatories were in the form of a request for admission. Green recommends that J-M refuse to admit plaintiff's request for admissions even though there are numerous items that Manville could admit. He reasons that "the plaintiff will have to produce a witness with or without the admission and that the sanctions if any would be small."