Riley v. Johns-Manville, California Industrial Accident Commission Award for an Insulator's Death (1961)

A seven-page order of August 3, 1961, by Referee George A. Martinelli of the California Industrial Accident Commission, in Grace Riley's case against Johns-Manville and dozens of other asbestos and insulation companies and their insurers (No. 57-LA 182-835). It found that her husband, James Whitcomb Riley, an insulator for California employers from 1920 to 1957, had been exposed every working day to "deleterious dusts which caused a pneumoconiosis with superimposed tuberculosis," and that his death on January 24, 1961, was "proximately the result of the industrial injury." It awarded his widow the $10,000 death benefit and set the whole claim at $25,720.07.

What it shows

Riley had been found totally disabled by the disease in an earlier award of November 1959. In this order one insurer, Industrial Indemnity Company, was made liable for the whole award, and sixteen other employers and insurers were ordered to repay it shares based on their periods of his exposure, the largest ($6,061.81) from Plant Rubber and Asbestos Works. Johns-Manville was named in the case and sent a copy of the order. The case shows how workers' compensation for an insulator's dust disease was divided among the many companies he had worked for.