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Montello

Montello, Inc., of Tulsa and Sand Springs, Oklahoma, sold asbestos additives for oil well drilling mud, chiefly Visbestos and Super Visbestos, and from 1968 was Union Carbide's exclusive distributor of Calidria asbestos to the drilling industry. The library has no record of a Montello bankruptcy or trust; it was still defending asbestos suits alongside Union Carbide in 2021.

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History

The trademark file for Visbestos, a "chrysotile asbestos compound" sold in 50-pound bags by Montello, Inc. of Tulsa, gives its first use in commerce as May 3, 19661. Union Carbide's 1969 business plan for its asbestos business set December 17, 1968, as the date to complete a distributor contract with Montello for Calidria products used as drilling fluid additives4. A Union Carbide workshop paper from 1968 lists, among the year's events, that Montello had been set up as distributor to the oil well drilling industry and that the trade name "Calidria" had been adopted5. In 2014 the Mississippi Supreme Court described the arrangement this way: Union Carbide manufactured Visbestos and Super Visbestos, and Montello was their exclusive distributor6.

In Union Carbide's sworn answers in later lawsuits, the company said it "packaged Calidria asbestos for the Montello Corporation for sale under the tradenames of Visbestos, Super Visbestos, Telvis, Imcobest and Univis."9 Kenneth N. Campbell was Montello's president10, 11. In 1973 and 1975 its own letters and Union Carbide's letters to it used a post office box in Sand Springs, Oklahoma; its 1966 bag and Union Carbide's 1980 letter to it give Tulsa addresses12, 13, 1, 14.

The products

A 1973 Montello bulletin describes Super Visbestos as "wet-refined, chrysotile asbestos" sold in 50-pound multi-wall paper sacks, used for hole cleaning in water-based drilling fluids2. A 1974 Union Carbide report says Super Visbestos was introduced to the drilling industry through Montello in 1969 as a premium-performance, premium-price mud additive15. A 1974 market study for Union Carbide gives its asbestos sales to Montello for drilling mud as 2,039 short tons in 1970, 2,421 in 1971, 1,817 in 1972 and 3,036 in 1973, with 3,600 tons budgeted for 1974 and a note that sales were limited by plant capacity16.

The chief competitor was Flosal, sold by Drilling Specialties. The 1974 market study calls it Johns Manville's "Flosal"16, and a 1980 Union Carbide meeting summary describes Drilling Specialties, a Phillips Petroleum subsidiary, as "the sole distributor for J-M's Flosal"17. The 1974 report says Drilling Specialties brought out an improved Flosal in the last half of 1973 that was claimed to be as good as Super Visbestos, and that testing by Montello and its customers' laboratories indicated considerable merit to the claim15. The report's own summary adds that the gap seemed to have closed "in part by an improvement in Flosal but, more importantly, by a substantial drop in Supervisbestos performance."15 By 1980 Union Carbide wrote that its share of the drilling mud business had fallen to about 35 to 40 percent since Johns-Manville introduced a water-wetted product18. In 1979 Montello sent a bulletin on UNIVIS, oil-wetted Calidria pellets meant to cut dust, to about 250 mud service companies19.

What the documents show

Labels. A Super Visbestos bag label in the exhibits reads "available exclusively from Montello, Inc. Tulsa, Oklahoma" and carries the warning "do not breathe dust."3 The Mississippi Supreme Court's opinion states that Union Carbide began labeling its asbestos products in June 1968 with the warning "Breathing Dust May Be Harmful," changed to the wording OSHA required in June 1972, and that although Montello made the bags, Union Carbide was the final decision-maker on how they were labeled6.

Dust testing and OSHA. After OSHA's asbestos standard took effect in June 1972, Montello sent out a Union Carbide report on airborne fiber measured at four well sites while Super Visbestos and similar products were dumped into drilling fluid12. Montello's 1973 bulletin said that on the strength of that study it believed there was "no reasonable expectation of exceeding the legal exposure limits" with either grind of Super Visbestos2. The Union Carbide report itself states that no representations "are made, nor are to be implied, from this report as to the safety of this material no matter how it is used."12 In April 1975, when the Dallas OSHA office was citing users of Montello's product for not posting asbestos caution signs, Union Carbide's technology manager Dr. H. B. Rhodes sent Campbell a revised draft of Montello's letter to OSHA, saying it had been "considerably softened" and argued that asbestos levels were typically well below those requiring signs20. In 1977 Rhodes told a Johns-Manville contact that Montello had given a packet of information to an OSHA compliance officer in Lubbock21.

Liability worries. At a September 1980 meeting, Union Carbide's notes record, "Montello's major concern is potential liability problems for themselves and their customers."17 In November 1981 Montello's insurance agent wrote that Home Insurance, its carrier, and United States Fidelity and Guaranty had both refused to change a policy exclusion, and that Home would use it to avoid paying any claim arising from Montello's distribution of Univis and Super Visbestos22. In January 1982 Campbell and another Montello representative met in Tulsa with the Asbestos Information Association, Union Carbide, Johns-Manville and oil and drilling companies to draft recommended work practices for asbestos in drilling fluids23. Union Carbide's 1985 domestic sales budget, sent in November 1984, still listed Montello, in Oklahoma, as a customer24.

Lawsuits

The library's case-law collection holds 15 decisions naming Montello, most of them from Louisiana7. In Union Carbide Corporation v. Nix (2014), the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld a compensatory verdict against Union Carbide on a failure-to-warn claim brought by a drilling worker who had mixed Visbestos and Super Visbestos, holding that using OSHA's label wording did not make a warning adequate as a matter of law; it sent the punitive damages award back for a new trial6. In Bagwell v. Union Carbide Corp. (2021), the Louisiana Supreme Court reinstated a jury verdict that assigned no fault to Union Carbide or to Montello, which the court described as the distributor8.

References

  1. Package: Visbestos chrysotile asbestos compound, 50 lb. bag (Montello, Inc.) (1966), and the Visbestos product page
  2. Montello Product Bulletin 3/73 on Super Visbestos Wet-Refined Chrysotile Asbestos for Drilling Fluids (1973), UC-972, p. 1
  3. Super Visbestos Concentrated Asbestos Compound 50 lb. Bag Label for Drilling Fluids, Montello, Inc. (undated), UC-409, p. 1
  4. F. D. Dexter to J. Clayton Stephenson Transmitting Calidria Asbestos Discussion Outline and 1969 Business Plan (1969), UC-811, p. 13
  5. F. D. Dexter to Distribution Announcing Calidria Asbestos Workshop (1968), UC-3026, p. 4
  6. Union Carbide Corporation v. Nix (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2014)
  7. Hsieh v. Badger Oil Corporation (U.S. District Court, M.D. La., 2021), and the Montello company page's list of court decisions
  8. Bagwell v. Union Carbide Corp. (Louisiana Supreme Court, 2021)
  9. Union Carbide's General Objections and Responses to Plaintiff's Interrogatories, UC-1669, p. 8
  10. Asbestos Information Association/North America List of Member Companies (1980), UC-4878, p. 4
  11. J. E. Walsh, Calidria South Territory Sales Review with Major Account Profiles (1981), Union Carbide 588, p. 9
  12. Montello, Inc. Cover Letter and Summary Transmitting Union Carbide Report on Airborne Asbestos Dust in Drilling Fluid Operations with Super Visbestos (1973), UC-711, pp. 1, 3
  13. H. B. Rhodes to Ken Campbell (Montello, Inc.) on OSHA Signs, Medical Examinations and Monitoring (1975), UC-1311, p. 1
  14. John L. Myers to K. N. Campbell (Montello, Inc.) on a Competitor's Prilled, Wetted JM Product Priced at $147/Ton (1980), UC-717, p. 1
  15. H. B. Rhodes Transmittal and Report 'Supervisbestos: A Review of Product Quality Trends and Competitive Market Position' (1974), UC-1495, p. 3
  16. G. J. Weihs, Chrysotile Asbestos (Group 7, Shorts) Market Analysis (1974), UC-209, p. 19
  17. J. L. Myers: Summary of September 30, 1980 Meeting with Montello, Calidria Drilling Fluid Distributor (1980), UC-720, pp. 1–3
  18. J. L. Myers to R. E. Byrne, Jr. and Others Transmitting Summary of the Asbestos Business, 1980 and 1981 (1980), UC-772, p. 2
  19. John L. Myers to R. E. Byrne, Jr. and Others on UNIVIS and Silane-Treated Asbestos, with Montello UNIVIS Bulletin (1979), UC-722, p. 1
  20. H. B. Rhodes to Ken Campbell (Montello) on a Softened Draft Letter to Dallas OSHA About Caution-Sign Citations (1975), UC-714, p. 1
  21. Harrison B. Rhodes to Jim Reese (Johns-Manville) on Fiber Count Data in Drilling Operations and OSHA (1977), UC-1505, p. 1
  22. Glenn Frisby (Fred Daniel and Sons Insurance) to Kenneth Campbell, Montello, Inc., on Insurers' Refusal to Modify the Pollution Exclusion (1981), UC-1312, p. 1
  23. Minutes of the Meeting to Develop Work Practices for the Use of Asbestos in the Drilling Industry, Tulsa (1982), UC-1516, p. 1
  24. G. L. Dickson to J. T. Kelly on 1984 Final Sales Forecast, 1985 Export and Domestic Sales Budget and 1985 Proposed Pricing (1984), UC-1330, p. 5

People

People the documents tie to Montello, most often named first, with the titles the documents give them.

Asbestos products

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

Court cases

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

In the Union Carbide documents

Montello is named in 102 Union Carbide documents dated 1968 to 1987 (4 as the source, 102 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Montello, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Montello, Inc · Montello Inc · Montello, Tulsa, Oklahoma · Montello, Sand Springs, Oklahoma · Montello, Inc., Tulsa, Oklahoma · Montello, Inc., Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

Where this comes from

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

Mentioned on this site

Cite this page

“Montello.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/montello.

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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.