Armstrong World Industries' Answers to Interrogatories in Evilsizor v. Fibreboard Corporation (1981)

Answers sworn on December 16, 1981, by Armstrong World Industries (formerly Armstrong Cork) to the plaintiff's interrogatories in Valva L. J. Evilsizor v. Fibreboard Corporation (No. B-81-717-CA, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont), signed by its lawyer B. Stephen Rice of Boswell, O'Toole, Davis & Pickering in Houston. Armstrong said it made or sold asbestos-containing insulation until mid-1969, and that it "first became aware of the likelihood of an ascertainable relationship" between airborne asbestos and disease in late 1968, when an employee brought the New Yorker article "The Magic Mineral" (October 12, 1968) to management's attention. It reported no asbestosis claims by its own manufacturing employees but 37 claims by its contract-unit (insulation contractor) employees from 1952 through 1965.

What it shows

The answers set out Armstrong's position in the 1981 litigation. It said it had no industrial hygienist until 1972, no medical library, no membership in the Asbestos Textile Institute or the Industrial Hygiene Foundation, and no studies of dust from its insulation before 1964. The only warnings it identified were respirator instructions published by its subsidiary Armstrong Contracting & Supply Corporation for Armaspray, a sprayed insulation sold from 1966 to 1969: "Always wear a U.S. approved respirator when spraying." A packaging attachment says Armstrong sold Kaylo in cartons bearing the Owens-Corning Fiberglas name, and 85% magnesia and calcium silicate pipe covering made by Ehret Magnesia under the Armstrong name in 1957. A summary of Armstrong's similar answers in a California case is Haight, Dickson, Brown & Bonesteel Summary of Armstrong World Industries' Interrogatory Answers in Meers v. Johns-Manville (1982).

About this copy

The two-page list of company physicians (pages 13 and 14 of the file) is left out because it gives the home addresses of private individuals in a document less than 50 years old. The product attachment the answers refer to is not in the file.