R. R. Standel Jr. to D. B. Wingerter Rejecting the Short-Form Marinite Caution Label (1969)

A one-page memo of December 16, 1969, marked "Confidential and Privileged," from R. R. Standel Jr., a Johns-Manville attorney, to D. B. Wingerter of the Industrial Insulations Division at Manville, with copies to E. M. Fenner, W. M. Deutsch and others. Standel wrote that "the wording of the 'short form' caution label requested for Marinite is not acceptable from the legal point of view," and that a label 3/8 inch by 4 inches on the edges of the board "would not be the best course to follow legally" whatever its wording. Because some customers covered Marinite with veneers and other facings, he suggested registered letters asking them to put a caution label back on the finished product, as a condition of sale, with J-M supplying the labels free.

What it shows

By late 1969 J-M had decided that Marinite, an asbestos board, should carry a caution label (Fenner's August 1969 guidelines), and the argument had moved to how small and how worded the label could be. The company's lawyer rejected the small label and looked for a way to keep the warning with the product after customers had covered it. Two days later C. L. Sheckler proposed clearer wording for the division's labels (Sheckler to Wingerter, December 18, 1969).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

R.R. Standel informs D.B. Wingerter in a confidential and privileged memorandum on 12/16/69 that "(t)he wording of the 'short form' caution label request for Marinite is not acceptable from the legal point of view."

Related documents

• E. M. Fenner to D. B. Wingerter on Which Insulation Products to Label (1969)