Benjamin Szymanski v. Johns-Manville Corporation, Complaint, Removal Papers and Plant Letters (1946)

Benjamin Szymanski, a worker at Johns-Manville's Manville, New Jersey, factory, sued the company in the Somerset County Court of Common Pleas in April 1946, claiming $50,000. His complaint says he had worked about 16 years with asbestos and other dusts, now had asbestosis, and had never been warned of "the dangers of his work." It says his disease left him no remedy under the state's Workmen's Compensation Act. J-M's lawyers, Hobart, Minard & Cooper, then filed papers to move the case to federal court. Two plant letters show how the company handled the claim.

What it shows

The day after the summons was served, A. B. Hall at the Manville factory sent it to Vandiver Brown, J-M's attorney at headquarters. He noted that Szymanski had been on sick leave since April 1944, had worked for the company since 1923, and that the plant had "his complete employment and medical records, including the x-rays." Three days later the plant physician, Dr. L. C. Fritts, wrote that Szymanski had been X-rayed since 1932. Fritts disagreed with the diagnosis of asbestosis made at Somerset Hospital: "I have never seen a case progress as rapidly as this." In his view the cause was tuberculosis. The letter is stamped "Noted V B." Like the Lacho and Smutko suits of 1939, this was a negligence suit brought outside compensation by a Manville plant worker.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Benjamin Szymanski v. J-M Corporation, 4/9/46, was initially filed in state court in New Jersey and was then removed to the U.S. District Court. Manville plantworker claim.