Crown Cork & Seal Company

Crown Cork & Seal, a maker of metal bottle caps, enters the asbestos record through Mundet Cork Corporation.²⁹³⁰ Mundet was a cork and bottle-cap company that also made 85% magnesia and other heat insulation and ran insulation contracting units.²³²⁹ Two court opinions say Crown Cork bought most of Mundet's stock in November 1963, that Mundet sold its insulation business to Baldwin-Ehret-Hill in February 1964, and that Crown Cork merged with Mundet in 1966.²⁹³⁰ In answers compiled by an insurer in 1980, Crown Cork denied that it ever made or sold asbestos products.¹ In later suits it accepted that it was liable as Mundet's successor. Texas courts held a Texas law capping that liability unconstitutional as applied to claims already pending, while a Pennsylvania court upheld that state's cap.²⁹³⁰³¹ Our trust pages list no asbestos trust for either company.

Mundet Cork before 1963

Mundet appears in the insulation trade long before Crown Cork bought it. In 1925 the insulators' union journal, The Asbestos Worker, reported that its Cincinnati local wanted the "shop of Mundet & Sons" unionized; the journal said the shop specialized in cork insulation.⁵ In 1933 Asbestos reported that Keasbey & Mattison had appointed Mundet Cork Company, of New Orleans, as its approved contractor for Louisiana.⁶ In 1939 the magazine said Mundet Cork Corporation had applied the piping and heater insulation on one turbine unit at a St. Louis power plant, using about 10,000 feet of magnesia and high-temperature pipe covering supplied by Keasbey & Mattison.⁷ In 1942 the union journal reported that a meeting with Mr. Choate of Mundet had produced the first International form of joint trade agreement signed in Jacksonville, Florida.⁸

By 1950 Mundet had a magnesia plant of its own. Asbestos reported in September 1950 that its new plant at North Bergen, New Jersey, was making custom molded 85% magnesia pipe covering and block.² A 1951 advertisement gave the Insulation Division's address as 7101 Tonnelle Avenue, North Bergen, listed district offices in 18 cities, and named a Canadian affiliate, Mundet Cork & Insulation, Ltd., of Toronto.⁹ A 1956 advertisement offered custom-molded 85% magnesia, air cell and anti-sweat insulation; a 1957 one added "Tri-Calite" for higher temperatures, polystyrene insulation, and cork board and pipe covering.¹⁰¹¹ A trade-association manual from about 1956 lists Mundet among the members of the Magnesia Insulation Manufacturers Association.¹²

Union Carbide's 1962 insulation manual describes several Mundet products and their makeup. It describes 85% magnesia block and pipe covering as hydrated magnesium carbonate "and the balance of asbestos fibers," and lists Mundet among its makers (Custom Molded 85% Magnesia).¹³ It describes Air Cell as layers of asbestos paper, Asbestos Sponge as laminated asbestos felts, and Tricalite as calcium silicate with a small amount of asbestos fiber.¹⁴ It describes 7M as a finishing cement of asbestos fibers and bonding clays.¹⁵

In July 1960 Asbestos reported that Mundet had held the first general sales meeting in its 67-year history.¹⁶ The article said J. J. Mundet had been elected chairman and president on June 17, 1960, returning to control after 11 years. It named the company's New Jersey plants at North Bergen and Hillside and said there were Mundet companies in Portugal, Canada, Spain and Great Britain.¹⁶ In February 1960 the magazine listed E. H. Luehs of Mundet as president of the National Insulation Manufacturers Association.¹⁷ Its review of 1963 listed Leon T. Choate as president and general manager of the Mundet Insulation Contracting Division.¹⁸

Crown Cork's purchase and the sale of the contracting division

Crown Cork's account, as The Travelers Insurance Company compiled it for a March 1980 asbestos seminar, is that Crown Cork bought Mundet Cork Corporation in November 1963.¹ Travelers drew its sheets mostly from defendants' own answers to interrogatories in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard suits, and its cover memo warns that some may be self-serving. The sheet says Mundet had two divisions, a Cork Products Division and a Thermal Insulation Contract Division. It says the contract division was never used by Crown Cork and was sold to Baldwin-Ehret-Hill, without saying who sold it.¹

Asbestos reported in March 1964 that Baldwin-Ehret-Hill had acquired the thermal insulation contract divisions of Mundet Cork Corporation.³ The item said Mundet had organized its first insulation contract unit in 1923, and that the purchase took in Mundet's facilities and staff in ten locations. It said Choate, who had been Mundet's executive vice president, joined Baldwin-Ehret-Hill as vice president of industrial sales.³ The magazine's review of 1964 listed the same purchase.¹⁹ According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, a compilation by plaintiffs' attorneys, Keene Corporation bought 98 percent of Baldwin-Ehret-Hill in 1968.²¹

A Johns-Manville memo of September 19, 1980, summarizing Keene's interrogatory answers, tells the story a little differently.⁴ It says that, apparently before February 1964, Mundet Cork was sold to Crown Cork and Seal. It says that soon after, Baldwin-Ehret-Hill bought the Mundet Cork machinery and contracting operation from Crown Cork. It also says Baldwin-Ehret-Hill bought a network of 12 contract units from Mundet in 1964, and that Baldwin-Ehret-Hill said it made no products under Mundet's name.⁴ The Sourcebook says Baldwin-Ehret-Hill acquired Mundet's thermal insulation contract division in 1964; its history of Keene describes the same purchase as the contracting branches formerly run by Mundet Cork.²⁰²¹

Two later court opinions describe the deal from the summary-judgment record in Crown Cork's own cases. Both say Crown Cork bought a majority of Mundet's stock in November 1963, and that Mundet itself sold its insulation business in February 1964.²⁹³⁰ The Satterfield opinion names the buyer as Baldwin-Ehret-Hill and the date as February 8, 1964. It says Baldwin-Ehret-Hill agreed to take on only the insulation division's liabilities arising after that date, so that Mundet kept the liability for exposure to its products before the sale.³⁰ Both say Mundet's remaining assets passed to Crown Cork by merger in 1966.²⁹³⁰

The sources differ in several ways. The J-M memo describes Crown Cork as the seller, while Asbestos and the two court opinions name Mundet; Crown Cork's 1980 sheet does not say. The J-M memo dates Crown Cork's purchase only "apparently before February, 1964"; the other sources give November 1963. Asbestos counts ten locations, while the J-M memo counts 12 contract units. The Sourcebook puts the sale in 1964 without a month.^134202930

What the documents show

The Travelers sheet records Crown Cork's position in full.¹ It says Crown Cork never imported, made, processed, sold or marketed asbestos materials, and did not mine or mill asbestos. It says the company first learned of asbestos hazards "upon service of Summons and Complaint in current litigation," and never labeled any product. It says Crown Cork denies any sales to the U.S. Government, including Long Beach Naval Shipyard, and denies ever selling asbestos-containing products. It also says Crown Cork had no contracting units in California, was not a member of the Asbestos Textile Institute and had no workers' compensation claims.¹²² The sheet speaks only of "Crown Cork"; it does not say whether those denials cover Mundet's own products before 1963.

Other documents in the library connect the Mundet name to asbestos insulation. Travelers' July 1981 products printout lists, under Crown Cork & Seal, eight products with the note "MUNDET," among them 85 Magnesia, Aircell, Tri-calite and 7M. It gives them as pipe covering, block and cement, and gives their years as 1930 to 1963.^23242533 These rows are the printout's claims, not findings. In the 1970 Borel v. Fibreboard case, Philip Carey's answers to interrogatories named Mundet Cork Corporation among the makers of 85% magnesia products like its own.²⁶ A passage in volume IV of the 1971 Borel trial transcript says Borel testified on cross-examination that he started work in 1936 at Texaco using products of Johns-Manville, Philip Carey, Standard Asbestos, Armstrong and Mundet Cork.²⁷ In a 1971 deposition in the same case file, an insulator who had worked for Mundet said Mundet had "sold out to Eagle-Picher." He said he did not think Mundet made asbestos products. We found no other document in the library that supports the Eagle-Picher statement.²⁸

Successor liability in the courts

In later suits Crown Cork accepted liability as Mundet's successor. In Satterfield v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Tex. App. 2008), the court said Crown Cork did not dispute that it was Mundet's successor by merger and liable under Texas law for Mundet's conduct.³⁰ In Robinson v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Tex. 2010), the Texas Supreme Court said Crown acknowledged that it had succeeded to Mundet's liabilities under New York and Pennsylvania law.²⁹ That opinion says Crown had been named in thousands of suits over Mundet's asbestos and had paid over $413 million in settlements by May 2003, though it had bought Mundet for about $7 million.²⁹

Both cases turned on Chapter 149 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, passed in 2003. As the Texas Supreme Court described it, the law capped some older successor corporations' asbestos liability at the value of the company they had taken over.²⁹ The court of appeals in Satterfield held the law unconstitutional as applied to a claim that was already pending.³⁰ In Robinson the Texas Supreme Court held that Chapter 149, as applied to the Robinsons' claims, violated the Texas Constitution's ban on retroactive laws. The opinion says the legislative record was "fairly clear that chapter 149 was enacted to help only Crown and no one else."²⁹

A Pennsylvania appeals court reached a different result under that state's own cap. In Markovsky v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Pa. Super. 2014), a suit over Mundet's asbestos products, the court upheld summary judgment for Crown Cork under a Pennsylvania statute that limits a successor's asbestos liability to the predecessor's asset value at the time of the merger.³¹ In Saller v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Cal. Ct. App. 2010), a California case over Mundet pipe covering at a refinery, the opinion says Mundet, "acquired by Crown in 1966," made asbestos-containing insulation in the early 1960s and sold it to oil refineries.³²

Bankruptcy and trust

Our trust pages list no asbestos trust for Crown Cork & Seal or for Mundet Cork.

References

1. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Crown Cork & Seal Product Information, p. 2
2. Asbestos, September 1950, p. 40
3. Asbestos, March 1964, p. 8
4. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Keene Corporation Product Information, p. 2 (Johns-Manville memo, September 19, 1980)
5. The Asbestos Worker, July 1925, p. 4
6. Asbestos, May 1933, p. 32
7. Asbestos, April 1939, p. 20
8. The Asbestos Worker, April 1942, p. 9
9. Asbestos, May 1951, p. 33
10. Asbestos, September 1956, p. 15
11. Asbestos, June 1957, p. 25
12. 85% Magnesia Insulation Manual, Second Edition (c. 1956), p. 4
13. Union Carbide Chemicals Company: Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 80
14. Union Carbide Chemicals Company: Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 78
15. Union Carbide Chemicals Company: Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 86
16. Asbestos, July 1960, p. 18
17. Asbestos, February 1960, p. 22
18. Asbestos, December 1963, p. 12
19. Asbestos, December 1964, pp. 3–4
20. N. Barbara J. Peters and George A. Peters, Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases: Medical, Legal, and Engineering Aspects, vol. 2 (New York: Garland Law Publishing, 1986), p. 159.
21. N. Barbara J. Peters and George A. Peters, Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases: Medical, Legal, and Engineering Aspects, vol. 2 (New York: Garland Law Publishing, 1986), p. 167.
22. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Crown Cork & Seal Product Information, p. 3
23. Travelers Asbestos Products Printout, July 1981, p. 16
24. Travelers Asbestos Products Printout, July 1981, p. 26
25. Travelers Asbestos Products Printout, July 1981, p. 28
26. The Borel v. Fibreboard Case File: Philip Carey answers to interrogatories (1970), p. 15
27. The Borel v. Fibreboard Case File: Trial transcript, volume IV (1971), p. 27
28. The Borel v. Fibreboard Case File: Deposition of an insulator (1971), p. 36
29. Robinson v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Tex. 2010)
30. Satterfield v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Tex. App. 2008)
31. Markovsky v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Pa. Super. 2014)
32. Saller v. Crown Cork & Seal Co. (Cal. Ct. App. 2010)
33. Travelers Asbestos Products Printout, July 1981, p. 19