J. E. Begert to Vandiver Brown on Stanley Nawracaj's Disability Claim (1941)

A one-page personal memo of July 24, 1941, from J. E. Begert, manager of Johns-Manville's Manville, New Jersey, factory, to Vandiver Brown, J-M's attorney, about employee Stanley Nawracaj. Begert enclosed a letter from C. W. Hite and a statement of claim, and reported that Hite was taking steps through A. M. Schmidt to have Nawracaj's disability claim considered by the insurance company, in the hope that he could be told the decision before his health and accident payments ran out. "It is our experience," Begert wrote, "that cases of this type get troublesome only when they see their payments are going to run out."

What it shows

The memo does not say what illness Nawracaj had. It shows plant management treating the end of insurance benefits as the point at which a sick worker might turn to a claim, a concern Begert raised the year before in the Bellomo case.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

J.E. Begert (Manville plant manager) writes to Vandiver Brown, 7/24/41, that C.W. Hite is taking the necessary steps to see that the disability claim of Nawracaj is considered by the insurance company. Begert hopes that a decision can be reached as soon as possible before Nawracaj's payments run out on Health and Accident. "It is our experience that cases of this type get troublesome only when they see their payments are going to run out."