Lloyd A. Carlson of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro to Herbert Morton Ball on Testimony in the Leahy Claim (1952)

A three-page letter of December 11, 1952, from Lloyd A. Carlson of the San Francisco law firm Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro to Herbert Morton Ball, Johns-Manville's secretary, in the compensation case Johns-Manville Products Corporation v. Mrs. Dora Leahy, et al. At a hearing on December 4, a plant employee described working conditions at the Redwood City plant, and Dr. Sydney J. Shipman testified for the insurance companies that Mr. Leahy's death "was due solely to carcinoma." Dr. George H. Houck testified for Mrs. Leahy that death was caused by "the combination of pulmonary fibrosis and bronchogenic carcinoma," and that cancer was more common in patients with long-standing pulmonary fibrosis, citing a 1947 study by Lynch and Cannon of forty fatal cases in which asbestosis was present.

What it shows

Most of the letter concerns which insurer had covered the Redwood City plant in 1935. Employers' Liability Assurance Company would not admit coverage for that year, and the referee said J-M would have to produce the policy, which neither side could find. By 1952 a widow's claim was putting the link between asbestosis and bronchogenic carcinoma before a California compensation referee, with J-M's lawyers reporting the medical testimony to headquarters.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter to Herbert Morton Ball, Esq., from Lloyd A. Carlson of Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, 12/11/52 re J-M Products Corporation v. Mrs. Dora Leahy, et al. Carlson informs Ball that Dr. Houck testified on behalf of the plaintiff to the effect that death was caused by the combination of pulmonary fibrous and bronchogenic carcinoma. Dr. Houck also stated that in his opinion there is great incidence of carcinoma in cases where patients have long standing pulmonary fibrosis than otherwise true. His opinion was based in part on the study published by Lynch and Cannon in 1947.