Handwritten Raybestos-Manhattan Notes for a Meeting with Medical Directors (1975)

Three pages of handwritten notes, much of them hard to read, headed "Meeting with Medical Directors." Page 1 outlines the meeting: a review of mortality and morbidity data "to establish basis for further discussion," a New York article on mortality, and the importance of understanding that R-M was in a unique and vulnerable position. Page 2 is the writer's note that for two years he had tried to tell Raybestos-Manhattan's management how serious the asbestos health issue was, and that a June 1973 review of mortality and morbidity data had led to little action. Page 3 lists reasons to cooperate with outside scientists: to help find safe levels of exposure, valuable company information going back to 1930, requests from researchers including Gilson and Mancuso, the obligation to employees, and the legal implications of withholding information.

What it shows

The notes show someone inside R-M urging management to act on the company's own health data and weighing the case for sharing its records with researchers. The writer listed the company's long run of information on its workers and the legal risk of keeping it back among the reasons to cooperate.

In Johns-Manville's index

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

3-page handwritten document entitled "Meeting with Medical Directors." Page 1 indicates that "review of mortality and morbidity data to establish basis for further discussion - New to some." Page 2 of the document is the same as Motley Document #638. Page 3 is headed "Why cooperate with ______?" Some of the responses are: 1) To assist in the determination of safe levels of exposure. 2) We have valuable information going back to 1930. 3) Obligation to employees. 4) Legal implications of withholding information. Most of the document is illegible.

One-page handwritten note (author unknown) stating that for "the past two years . . . , I have attempted to communicate to R-M's management about the seriousness of the asbestos health issue as it relates to R-M." The author states that he thought that the meeting in June 1973 at which mortality and morbidity data were reviewed in detail would be more than sufficient to shock people into action. The rest of the note is illegible. (See Motley Document #671.)

About this copy

These are documents 671 and 638 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-002342 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002344.