J. Scott Brady to James Green on the Ralph McCreary Deposition, with J-M Sales Records for CE Refractories (1981)

A two-page letter of June 29, 1981, from J. Scott Brady of the Philadelphia law firm Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman and Goggin to James Green of Johns-Manville's legal department, reporting on the April 16, 1981, deposition of Ralph McCreary, purchasing agent for CE Refractories, a unit of Combustion Engineering. McCreary recalled buying asbestos products from Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Keene, Ruberoid, J-M, Pittsburgh Corning and Flintkote, and hearing that raw asbestos had once been bought from Carey, Canadian and Empire; he said asbestos products for CE's jobs were mostly shipped straight to the job site, and that the Port Kennedy, Pennsylvania, plant only repackaged and reshipped them. The rest of the file holds a refractory product cross-reference chart, a 1980 J-M request for a computer check of sales to CE Refractories and other customers for the Osteen v. Johns-Manville Sales Corporation case, a 1973 J-M invoice to CE Refractories at Port Kennedy, and J-M sales printouts to Port Kennedy for 1972 to 1979.

What it shows

The printouts, with most lines blacked out, show yearly sales to CE Refractories at Port Kennedy of J-M asbestos products: asbestos roll fire felt, No. 300 and No. 352 insulating cements, Thermobestos pipe insulation and blocks, Insulkote, asbestos millboard, asbestos paper and asbestos tape, along with Transite pipe. Brady also notes that the Port Kennedy plant handled large amounts of silica products, which he thought could matter in one of the firm's cases, where the disease might be silicosis rather than asbestosis.