Vandiver Brown to E. M. Voorhees on the Failure of Illinois Occupational Disease Legislation (1935)

A one-page memorandum of July 3, 1935, from Vandiver Brown of Johns-Manville's legal department to E. M. Voorhees, J-M's vice president, copied to W. R. Seigle and S. A. Williams. Brown reports, on word from Lloyd Heth, the lawyer defending J-M's Illinois dust suits, that the Illinois legislature had adjourned without passing any occupational disease law: the manufacturers' bill "which we favored" never left committee, and labor's bill was defeated. Until the next session, he writes, anyone with an "alleged occupational disease must rely on his common law rights," apart from a "small chance" that dust diseases might be held to fall under Section 2 of the old act.

What it shows

Brown expected a court would not hold dusts to be "poisonous" under Section 2, and thought that section would likely be struck down like Section 1. Workers' dust disease claims in Illinois would therefore stay in the courts as lawsuits, the outcome the manufacturers' bill had been drafted to avoid (the Illinois draft law). The day before, J-M's Waukegan plant had asked headquarters what to do about approved dust control spending now that no law had passed (Kottcamp to Williams).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Brown writes to E.M. Voorhees (J-M V.P.) in a memorandum dated 7/3/35 that the Illinois Legislature adjourned without passing any occupational disease legislation. He says that this means that until the next session of the Legislature, anyone suffering from alleged occupational disease must rely on common law rights.