Thomas L. Gatke to J. F. D. Rohrbach on Getting Gardner's Report (1946)

A two-page letter of August 12, 1946, from Thomas L. Gatke, president of Gatke Corporation, a Chicago brake lining maker, to J. F. D. Rohrbach, executive vice president of Raybestos-Manhattan. Gatke was glad Rohrbach was "going after Vandiver Brown" to get action from Dr. Gardner, who had delayed for years. He proposed insisting on a report based on Gardner's preliminary findings that dust particles smaller than 5 microns were not injurious and that damage came from "heavier fibres," which could be stopped with respirators. "With these two facts established, and without injections of possibilities of cancer, etc., etc., we would have something definite and worthwhile to combat the claims of these country doctors who set themselves up as experts."

What it shows

Gatke, one of the companies paying for the Saranac Laboratory work, wanted a report he could use in court, and he wanted it to leave out cancer. He wrote that once the companies had the report, "we could let the rest of it go by the board," and that Gardner "certainly should feel some obligation to give us something quite soon for fear he might be incapacitated before the work is done." He had not given to the laboratory's building fund because of its "apparent lack of interest in the affairs of our Industry." T. L. Gatke of Asbestos Textile Company had written to Vandiver Brown in similar terms in April (letter of April 18, 1946).

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

Thomas L. Gatke (President, Gatke Corporation) letter to J.F.D. Rohrbach (Executive Vice President, R-M), 8/12/46, stating that he is glad that Rohrbach is going to encourage Dr. Gardner to complete his report because Dr. Gardner has delayed too long. Gatke states that Dr. Gardner in his preliminary report established that dust of a particle size less than 5 microns is not injurious. Also Dr. Gardner concluded that damage is caused by the "heavier fibers," which Gatke states "we know can be arrested through the use of approved types of respirators. With these two facts established, and without injections of possibilities of cancer," Gatke states that "we would have something definite and worthwhile to combat the claims of these country doctors who set themselves up as experts but who actually have had no experience beyond what they read in books and whose statements have been accepted by the courts as more or less authentic because we have had no expert testimony based on such experience as Dr. Gardner's."

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to J. F. D. Rohrbach Enclosing Gardner's Reply on the Asbestos Dust Experiments (1946)

About this copy

This is document 220 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001309 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001310.