The Lacho and Smutko Suits Against Johns-Manville, with C. W. Hite's Memo on Smutko (1939)

Court papers from two lawsuits by Manville, New Jersey, plant workers, and a confidential plant memo on one of them. Julia Lacho sued in federal court in August 1939 for the death of her husband John, a weaver at the plant who died in October 1938, alleging that J-M had failed to control asbestos dust and to warn him of its hazards; Frank Smutko sued in 1940. Both cases were settled and dismissed. In the memo of August 7, 1940, C. W. Hite, industrial relations manager at the Manville factory, answering questions from Vandiver Brown, wrote that "Smutko was never warned of any dust danger; It was not the policy of the Company to call things of this nature to the attention of our employees."

What it shows

Hite's memo also reports that a respirator rule in force since 1935 "has not been rigidly enforced," gives dust counts taken at the crusher, and describes efforts to obtain a doctor's letter stating that Smutko had tuberculosis rather than asbestosis. The suits came months after Brown wrote that nearly ten years had passed without a claim by a Manville employee (his February 1939 memo). The Lacho complaint alleged that J-M owed its workers a duty to warn them of the plant's hazards; Hite's memo states that such warnings were not company policy.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Lacho, Smutko and Bok claims against J-M (Manville plant). Privileged documents dated 8/7/39 show company policy not to warn employees of dust hazards settlement negotiated rather than allow inspection of plant conditions by engineers retained by claimants ("no alternative other than to commence talking terms of settlement").

Editor's note: J-M's description dates the privileged documents August 7, 1939. The only such document in this file is C. W. Hite's memo to J. E. Begert of August 7, 1940, about the Smutko case. No Bok papers are in this file, and the quotation about "talking terms of settlement" and the statement about refusing inspections by the claimants' engineers are not in it.