Bernard Dugan v. R. V. Aycock Company, Kansas City Court Papers (1933)

Court papers in Bernard Dugan's suit against R. V. Aycock Company, Aycock Corporation and R. V. Aycock in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Kansas City, begun with a summons dated October 27, 1933. Dugan, a common laborer in Aycock's asbestos construction and repair business, said that mixing asbestos with water by hand, bent over the container, filled his lungs with asbestos "fumes and particles" and left him permanently disabled, that the defendants knew the danger yet failed to warn him or give him a mask, and asked $50,000. The longer file also holds Johns-Manville board minutes of June and August 1932 recording J-M's purchase of "certain assets of R. V. Aycock Company," which were transferred to two new subsidiaries of the Sales Corporation, Aycock Corporation and Aycock Corporation of Texas.

What it shows

Aycock Corporation asked to move the case to federal court, and an amended petition of February 1934 named R. V. Aycock Company and Vaughn Investment Company instead, alleging "a condition of silicosis." The defendants then reported that Dugan had died in Jackson County on March 26, 1934, and in the March 1935 term moved to dismiss because the case had not been revived. The file shows that by 1933 a business J-M had bought was being sued by a construction laborer who handled asbestos.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

On 10/27/33, complaint in Dugan v. Aycock alleges asbestos exposure in construction work context, i.e. mixing asbestos cement. Defendant had been acquired by J-M. Case dismissed in 1935 against all defendants.

Editor's note: J-M's description says the case was dismissed in 1935 against all defendants. The file holds the defendants' 1935 motion to dismiss after Dugan's death, but no order of dismissal.