Johns-Manville Form 10-K for 1974: Legal Proceedings (1975)

The cover and the asbestos paragraph of Johns-Manville's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1974. J-M was a defendant in 57 suits by people exposed to its asbestos products, which "typically allege" that the defendants "failed in their duty to warn of the hazards of inhalation of asbestos dust." The company "maintains that there was no basis for any warning until the publication of scientific studies in 1964 following which appropriate warnings were given," and said recoveries would not materially affect its earnings or financial position.

What it shows

This is the first filing in the binder to state the failure to warn claim and the company's answer to it, the position that no warning was called for before 1964. The same sentence appears in each later filing. Unlike the 1973 report, this paragraph does not mention insurance.

The 1964 date refers to Dr. Selikoff's study of insulation workers (Selikoff Studies). J-M's own earlier papers, published elsewhere in this library, record what the company knew before then.