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Garlock

Garlock, founded as the Garlock Packing Company of Palmyra, New York, made mechanical packings, gaskets and gasket sheet, many of them of asbestos, and made its own asbestos textiles. Its asbestos products included compressed asbestos sheet and braided packings of white and blue asbestos. Garlock Sealing Technologies filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and its claims are now paid by the GST Settlement Facility.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

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History

According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Olin J. Garlock, Frederick W. Griffith and Eugene Nichols formed the Garlock Packing Company of Palmyra in September 1887.24 It began by making mechanical and steam packings, asbestos packings among them.24 The company was incorporated in 1905.24 In 1916 it put in its own asbestos textile mill to spin the yarn for the cloth used in its packings, and that work grew until a Textile Department was set up.24 The company went public in 1929.24

When Frederick Winters Griffith died in 1928, Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, described him as president, treasurer and one of the founders of the Garlock Packing Company of Palmyra, New York, who had "helped supervise all its activities for over a period of forty years."1 In 1929 the journal reported a new power plant at Palmyra and ground broken for a 17,500-square-foot factory building.8 In January 1930 it reported the trademark "Garlock 234," granted for "packing material made of various combinations of asbestos, rubber, cotton, flax, copper, lead, iron and babbitt."2 Through the 1930s and 1940s Garlock was assigned patents for gaskets and packing rings, some of them listed in the journal.910

The company grew in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1955 it bought U. S. Gasket Company of Camden, New Jersey, a maker of fluorocarbon plastic products.11 The 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases also lists U. S. Gasket among Garlock's acquisitions in 1955, but its table of name changes treats Garlock Inc. as U.S. Gasket Co. under a later name.2425 A 1959 Bureau of Mines survey listed the Garlock Packing Co. at Palmyra among the larger makers of asbestos textile products.4 By the end of 1960, now as Garlock, Inc., it had expanded its asbestos weaving "making it possible to begin marketing a full line of plain weave asbestos cloth."5 In 1961 it described its new Style 5875 as "the white asbestos braided packing" containing more than 30 percent Teflon by weight.12 The Sourcebook says that in 1964 Garlock offered a limited line of asbestos textiles, mainly cloth.24 In 1975 Asbestos reported that a "modern asbestos textile facility" was being built at Sherbrooke, Quebec, as a Garlock affiliate with the Quebec Industrial Development Commission, and that Garlock had increased its interest in an asbestos textile maker in Barcelona, Spain.13 By 1979 Garlock's Mechanical Packing Division was reported as part of Colt Industries' industrial seals business.14

Asbestos products

Trademark files in our library give 1883 as the date of first use in commerce for the label of Garlock's ring packing and July 1, 1890 for that of its Style No. 150 high-pressure spiral packing.1516 A 1964 Garlock catalog page shows a coiled asbestos and rubber packing for piston, valve and pump rods, valve stems and expansion joints.17 Garlock's 1975 industrial products catalog offers compressed asbestos sheet made of white or blue asbestos, woven asbestos cloth and tape, and braided packings of white and African blue (crocidolite) asbestos yarn; our description of the catalog notes that no asbestos hazard warning appears in it.3 At a 1975 meeting on asbestos use in Canada, those attending said Garlock had used crocidolite in making gaskets but no longer did.18

Union Carbide's plant records name Garlock products in use. A 1977 memo from its Ponce, Puerto Rico, plant says the unit there used "Garlock 7021, a white asbestos gasket," and that its Bound Brook unit used "Garlock 8554, felted blue-asbestos gaskets."19 A 1985 memo from South Charleston, West Virginia, says a shop there had switched to non-asbestos Garlock gasketing on pump heads in 1983 "to decrease exposure to asbestos materials."20

What the documents show

Garlock took part in the asbestos textile makers' trade group from its start. George Abbott of the Garlock Packing Company was present at the organization meeting of the Asbestos Textile Institute in New York on November 16, 1944.21 A Garlock representative attended, as a guest, the Institute's Air Hygiene Committee meeting of March 7, 1956, at which Dr. Kenneth Smith, Johns-Manville's medical director, said "he has no evidence that there is not a relationship between Asbestosis and Cancer."22 In 1973 Garlock sat on the board of the Fluid Sealing Association alongside Anchor Packing, A. W. Chesterton, Johns-Manville and others.23

Bankruptcy and trust

Garlock Sealing Technologies, which had made asbestos gaskets and packing, filed for Chapter 11 in 2010 in the Western District of North Carolina.6 In January 2014 the bankruptcy court estimated Garlock's total liability for present and future mesothelioma claims at $125 million, rejecting the claimants' estimates of $1 to 1.3 billion.6 The trust that now pays its claims, the GST Settlement Facility, was funded with about $480 million and began in 2017.7 Our trust page notes that Garlock's products carried asbestos through the end of 2000.7

References

  1. Asbestos, August 1928, p. 30
  2. Asbestos, January 1930, p. 56
  3. Garlock: Industrial Products Catalog (1975)
  4. Asbestos: A Materials Survey (Bureau of Mines Information Circular 7880, 1959), p. 75
  5. Asbestos, December 1960, p. 8
  6. In re Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC (Bankr. W.D.N.C. 2014)
  7. Garlock asbestos trust claims
  8. Asbestos, August 1929, p. 54
  9. Gasket (US Patent 1,942,704, 1934)
  10. Asbestos, August 1948, p. 48
  11. Asbestos, September 1955, p. 44
  12. Asbestos, January 1961, p. 16
  13. Asbestos, August 1975, p. 12
  14. Asbestos, October 1980, p. 51
  15. Ring packing (Garlock), product page
  16. Style No. 150 High Pressure Spiral Packing (Garlock), product page
  17. Catalog page: Asbestos and Rubber Packings (Garlock Inc.)
  18. Summary of the Meeting on Asbestos Usage in Canada (1975), p. 1
  19. Ricardo J. Prieto to E. Báez on Gasket Materials to Replace Asbestos Gaskets (1977), UC-2409, p. 1
  20. A. E. Wood to All Department Heads on Use of Non-Asbestos Gaskets at South Charleston (1985), UC-2414, p. 1
  21. Minutes of the Organization Meeting of the Asbestos Textile Institute (1944), p. 1
  22. Asbestos Textile Institute Air Hygiene Committee Minutes on Dr. Kenneth Smith, Dr. Hueper and Lung Cancer (1956), pp. 1–2
  23. Asbestos, March 1973, p. 24
  24. 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. 166.
  25. 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. 161.

Asbestos trust

If you or a family member worked with or around Garlock's asbestos products and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, a claim may be paid by the GST Settlement Facility. Free case review.

Asbestos products

6 products our documents name Garlock as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

Court cases

51 court decisions in our case-law library name Garlock as a defendant, newest first.

In our library

4 documents in our library name Garlock, by collection.

Other library documents (4)

In the Union Carbide documents

Garlock is named in 22 Union Carbide documents dated 1955 to 2001 (22 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. 21 of them are published in our collection.

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Garlock, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Garlock, Inc · Garlock Inc..

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Garlock, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.

Cite this page

“Garlock.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/garlock.

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This page is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Every asbestos case turns on its own facts, exposure history, diagnosis, deadlines, available evidence, and applicable law. Reviewing this page does not create an attorney-client relationship. For advice about your specific situation, call 833-4-ASBESTOS for a free case review.