Johns-Manville List of Asbestos Health Litigation Verdicts, 1974-1982 (1982)

An 11-page table kept by Johns-Manville, headed "Asbestos Health Litigation," listing the asbestos personal-injury cases against J-M that went to verdict from 1974 to 1982. For each it gives the year, the plaintiff, the state, the alleged disease, the judgment, its grounds (negligence, strict liability, failure to warn), the total verdict and J-M's share, with footnotes on appeals, credits and settlements after trial, and handwritten J-M claim file numbers. It begins with Clarence Borel's 1974 verdict in Texas ($79,436.24, J-M's share $9,750) and ends with cases tried in 1982, many of them marked "Punitive damages at issue."

What it shows

The list shows how quickly the verdicts grew. Through 1977 no award was above $200,000, and J-M won several cases outright. By 1980 and 1981 juries were returning verdicts such as $1,229,491 for Richard Hogard in California (J-M's share $799,173) and, in 1982, $1,060,000 in compensatory and $1,000,000 in punitive damages for Beatrice Hansen in Texas, all of it J-M's share. The footnotes record how many plaintiff's verdicts were cut or settled on appeal: Helen Dishner's $750,000 Pennsylvania verdict settled for $275,000, and several later verdicts were reduced to nothing against J-M by credits for other defendants' settlements. The last dated note is of August 11, 1982, two weeks before J-M filed for bankruptcy. For J-M's own accounts of the litigation in these years, see Manville's litigation chronology.