Robert W. Neirynck to Robert Batson on Hugh Jackson's Testimony About the Celite Warning Label (1982)

A two-page letter of January 18, 1982, from Robert W. Neirynck of Costigan & Wollrab in Bloomington, Illinois, to Robert Batson of Johns-Manville's legal department in Denver, in a suit by the estate of a man named William against J-M. Plaintiffs in the Bloomington cases claimed lung fibrosis from diatomaceous earth that J-M sold to the Union Asbestos and Rubber Company (Unarco) without warnings. Neirynck had read Hugh Jackson's November 1979 deposition, in which Jackson said J-M began putting a warning on bags of its Celite diatomaceous earth in 1957, and denied that a 1952 letter to Dr. Lanza showed the label went on in 1952.

What it shows

Neirynck writes that for the Bloomington cases "it would be more advantageous to us if, in fact, the label was affixed in 1952," because the Unarco plant there opened that year, and he asks for a copy of the warning and anything showing when it was first used. J-M's own files show a caution label for Celite was ordered in May 1952 (H. M. Jackson's memo to all plant managers). Neirynck also notes that in the depositions of Jackson and of Dr. Edward Merrill, attention had turned to Dr. Kenneth Smith's 1947 to 1949 report on the Jeffrey mine (see Smith's survey of 708 men), in which Smith said it was company policy not to tell employees they had asbestosis until they were disabled, so the company could keep the benefit of their "many years of experience." He asks for a copy of that report.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter to Robert Batson from Robert W. Neirynck of Costigan & Wollrab; dated 1/18/82, re: William Mau v. Johns-Manville states that diatomaceous earth comes into play in the Mau litigation. Neirynck describes a discrepancy in Jackson's deposition where Jackson discusses a letter that was sent to Dr. Lanz in 1952 which seemed to imply that the warning label was affixed in 1952 rather than in 1957, the year in which Jackson recalls that the warning labels were put on. Neirynck states that in the Bloomington litigation, it would be more advantageous if, in fact, the label was affixed in 1952 since the Bloomington plant did not commence operations until that year.