Richard P. Carter's Memo on the Beaumont Meeting and Holding Off on New Warning Labels Until the Borel Appeal (1971)

A four-page privileged memo to file of November 16, 1971, by Richard P. Carter, copied to G. Earl Parker, on a November 12 meeting in Beaumont, Texas, with John Tucker and Gordon Pate, defense lawyers in the Borel and Potter asbestosis cases, attended by Talmadge Neece of Travelers Insurance and lawyer Lyman Field. On page 3 Carter wrote: "Lyman Field and I agreed not to revise our warning label on asbestos products until after the Borel appeal is decided, so as not to prejudice our case on appeal." The reason given: "This may indicate to the court that we felt the warning label was not adequate."

What it shows

The memo is a strategy note on J-M's Texas litigation. It records the expected Borel judgment of $58,534.04 against six defendants, a plan to have Dean Page Keeton of the University of Texas Law School write and argue the Borel appeal, and the scheduling of a deposition in the new Hartwell case for January "in order to keep Ward Stephenson busy so that he won't have too much time to prepare for the Potter trial." Carter noted that in the Harrod case in Kansas all the plaintiff's exposure came after J-M put warning labels on its insulation. The decision on the label shows J-M's lawyers holding back a change to the warning on its products for the sake of an appeal (Borel's original complaint).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

File memorandum by Richard P. Carter, dated 11/16/71, regarding Asbestos Litigation, Meeting with John Tucker, Beaumont, Texas, 11/12/71. On page 3, Carter states that Lyman Field and Carter agreed not to revise Manville warning labels on asbestos products until after the Borel appeal is decided, "so as not to prejudice Manville's case on appeal." Carter states that they did not want the judges on appeal to learn of Manville's change of the warning label subsequent to the Borel trial. The reason was that it may indicate to the court that Manville felt the warning label was inadequate.

Related documents

• Clarence Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corporation, Plaintiff's Original Complaint (1969)