W. R. Curtner to W. B. Reitze on Workers' Compensation Procedural Questions (1978)

A one-page memo of February 23, 1978, from W. R. Curtner to W. B. Reitze listing questions about workers' compensation claims raised by J-M's excess insurance carriers. Curtner asks Waukegan to resume getting state board approval before settling claims, asks whether "flagged" employees at Waukegan were being moved "to the lowest possible exposure levels within the plant," and suggests that "in some states, it may be advantageous to encourage employees to file disease claims as soon as the disease is diagnosed because this will fix benefit levels to the lower benefit schedules existing at an earlier date."

What it shows

Curtner also proposes offering lifetime annuities in place of lump sums and asks plants to note whether a flagged employee's medical care was asbestos-related, since an insurer could treat the first such visit as the date of injury. The memo shows J-M's claims staff weighing the timing of workers' claims for their effect on the company's costs. The same questions appear in the notes of the December 1977 Waukegan meeting.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Memorandum to W.B. Reitze from W.R. Curtner, 2/23/78, regarding Workers' Compensation Procedural Question, discusses that Manville "encourage employees to file disease claims as soon as the disease is diagnosed because this will fix benefit levels to the lower benefit schedules existing" at the time.