Johns-Manville Form 10-K for 1977: Legal Proceedings (1978)

The cover and Item 5, Legal Proceedings, of Johns-Manville's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1977. As of March 1, 1978, J-M was a defendant in 623 asbestos suits; it had settled 94, and of eight tried, four were decided for the plaintiff and four for the company. "Of the 102 asbestos health cases tried or settled, the average amount paid by or on behalf of the Company is less than $25,000." For the first time, the filing says that during the years of exposure "the Company, government officials and medical and scientific authorities believed" insulation workers' dust levels "presented no appreciable hazard."

What it shows

The suit count more than doubled in a year. The filing describes three groups of cases: four multi-plaintiff suits in New Jersey (about 500 Raybestos-Manhattan workers and an Owens-Corning Fiberglas group); indemnity actions by a former contract physician in Contra Costa County, California; and "direct employee actions" by J-M workers. These included 14 cases from the Pittsburg, California, plant, each plaintiff seeking $11,000,000; five cases with 125 plaintiffs from Lompoc, California; one Waukegan, Illinois, case seeking $75,000,000 in all; and a purported class action from the Manville, New Jersey, plants in which each plaintiff sought $500,000,000. Against these the company relied on the defense that workers' compensation was the employees' only remedy.

The company said its post-1964 dust control and safety measures "will reduce or virtually eliminate the incidence of future injuries," and that because of long latency "new cases continue to arise," which it believed related to earlier exposures. When a director asked about precautions in October 1978, McKinney told the board that Dr. Kotin considered two fibers per c.c. safe, "although there is opinion to the contrary" (board minutes, 1974 to 1978).