Waukegan Workers' Suits Against Johns-Manville in Illinois (1934)

Court papers from damage suits brought in 1934 by workers at Johns-Manville's Waukegan, Illinois, plant against Johns-Manville Corporation, Johns-Manville Products Corporation and Johns-Manville Sales Corporation, filed in the Superior Court of Cook County and the Circuit Court of Lake County, and many of them heard in the U.S. District Court in Chicago. The workers, among them Nick Bojko, Jack Coleman, Charles Sarounas, Luis Perez, George Ruskell, Pearl H. Barenklau, Frank Brown, Estella Hacker and Tony Yakobich, said that dust from asbestos, cement and other materials in the plant's mixing, tiling, packing and loading departments had damaged their lungs, and that the company had failed to provide dust collection, masks or respirators. J-M answered with denials and moved to dismiss, arguing that Illinois law gave employees no right to sue their employer for occupational disease outside the state's Occupational Diseases Act and Workmen's Compensation Act.

What it shows

On December 27, 1934, the federal court overruled and denied J-M's motions to dismiss in nine of the cases. It held that the complaints did not allege work with "poisonous chemicals, minerals or other substances" under the Occupational Diseases Act, so the court, not the Illinois Industrial Commission, had jurisdiction. Luis Perez, who said he had worked about sixteen years for J-M for $20 a week, petitioned in January 1935 to advance his trial because his doctors had told him he had "pneumoconiosis, asbestosis with tuberculosis" and was likely to die before his case was reached. These suits came the year after J-M settled the New Jersey asbestosis cases.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Pearl H. Barenklau, Nick Bojko, Frank Brown, Jack Coleman, Estella Hacker, William Norwood, Luis Perez, George Ruskell, Charles Sarounas, Fred Seifert, Tony Yakobich v. J-M Products and/or Sales Corp. These complaints were filed in Illinois during 1934 and 1935 and involve plantworkers from the Waukegan plant.

Editor's note: J-M's description lists cases for William Norwood and Fred Seifert; no papers from those cases are in this file. Several of the complaints name Johns-Manville Corporation, not J-M Products or Sales Corporation, as defendant.