James K. Green to Thomas C. DeLorenzo on NICA Records and Dr. Kenneth Smith's 1964 Talk to Insulation Contractors (1978)

A two-page letter of August 11, 1978, from James K. Green, a senior attorney at Johns-Manville, to Thomas C. DeLorenzo of the Philadelphia defense firm Marshall, Dennehey & Warner. Green had reviewed the records of the National Insulation Contractors Association (NICA) and its predecessor, the Insulation Distributor-Contractors National Association (IDCNA), back to 1953. He found that Dr. Kenneth W. Smith of J-M gave the featured address on "Asbestosis" at the IDCNA's convention on October 27, 1964, "only two weeks after Dr. Selikoff presented his paper at the New York Academy of Science, which Dr. Smith attended."

What it shows

Green had found a J-M employee who attended the convention and recalled that Dr. Smith "basically discounted Dr. Selikoff's findings and gave the impression that insulators were not at risk." Green writes that this tended to impeach Smith's testimony about the warnings he had given J-M, but "also undermines our position of responding to the health hazard of insulation workers once the danger was known." Because it "must be employed judiciously, if at all," he did not want the documents circulated among counsel. Compare Smith's own account in his 1976 deposition on caution labels and his October 1964 memo on asbestos and cancer publicity.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from James K. Green to Thomas C. DeLorenzo of Marshall, Dennehey & Warner, 8/11/78, re Asbestos Cases; NICA Records. With regard to Dr. Kenneth Smith's featured address on "Asbestosis" which was delivered at a program of IDCNA's Ninth Annual Convention on 10/27/64, Green states that he located a J-M employee who attended this convention. The employee recalled that Dr. Smith basically discounted Dr. Selikoff findings and gave the impression that an insulator was not at risk.

Green states that while this information tends to impeach Dr. Smith's testimony concerning warnings he had given to J-M, it also undermines J-M's position of responding to the health hazard of insulation workers once the danger was known. Because this information must be employed judiciously, if at all, Green recommends that the documents should not be circulated among counsel at this time.