Southern Asbestos Company

Southern Asbestos Company of Charlotte, North Carolina, made asbestos textiles: cloth, yarn, tape, tubing and rope, sold under names such as Flamegard and the Gardian line. The Thermoid Company took control of it in 1929, and by 1959 it was owned by H. K. Porter Company, which took over all of its liabilities when Southern Asbestos was liquidated that year; the name was still in use for the Charlotte textile plant in 1976.

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

History

The trade journal Asbestos reported in November 1920 that "the Southern Asbestos Company of Charlotte, N. C." had increased its capital to $800,000; the same item reported a capital increase for a Southern Asbestos Company at Raleigh, North Carolina.⁶ In December 1927 the journal reported that the Southern Asbestos Company was buying, through an issue of 20,000 shares of common stock, the properties and business of the Southern Asbestos Manufacturing Co. of Charlotte and Lincolnton, North Carolina, which it said had been organized in 1919.⁷ In 1928 the journal described the company as having plants at Charlotte and Lincolnton and reported net earnings of $402,098 for the year ended June 30.⁸ W. H. Truesdell was its president in 1928.⁹

Under Thermoid. In April 1929 Asbestos reported that the Thermoid Company of Trenton had acquired a controlling interest in Southern Asbestos, said to make the combined company "the second largest earning property in the asbestos industry in this country."⁴ By September 1929 Thermoid owned 51,000 of the 99,520 common shares; the journal later described Southern Asbestos as 95 percent owned (1931) and 98 percent owned (1935) by Thermoid.¹⁰¹¹¹² In February 1930 the journal reported that after C. H. Carlough resigned as president, the board had elected R. J. Stokes, an officer of Thermoid, as president, and that George S. Fabel had been appointed general manager.¹³ Fabel was president by December 1934 and was still listed as president in 1951.¹⁴¹⁵ Thermoid's annual report for 1931 showed an operating deficit at Southern Asbestos, which it attributed principally to severe competition in the asbestos textile industry.¹⁶

In 1945 Asbestos listed Southern Asbestos among the asbestos textile makers that had become members of the Asbestos Textile Institute, and in 1951 Fabel was the Institute's vice-president.¹⁷¹⁸

H. K. Porter. According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Thermoid merged with H. K. Porter Company in 1958 and was later run as Porter's Thermoid Division.³⁰ On December 1, 1959, Southern Asbestos Company, a Delaware corporation whose capital stock was owned by H. K. Porter Company, Inc., signed a general conveyance under a plan of liquidation. It transferred all of its business, property and assets, including the right to use the Southern Asbestos name, to Porter, and Porter agreed to pay and perform all of Southern Asbestos's debts, liabilities and obligations.⁵ It was signed for both companies and notarized at Pittsburgh.⁵ The Sourcebook says that in 1971 Porter moved most of its asbestos-products manufacturing to its Charlotte and Bennettsville works.³¹ The name continued: in January 1976 Asbestos reported that "Southern Asbestos Company installed a data processing unit at its asbestos textile plant at Charlotte, North Carolina," and that its Bennettsville Works would be tied into the system.²

Products

The 1976 item describes "Southern's colorful Gardian line of textiles, tapes, yarn, tubing and rope," treated by what it called the Cleangard process.² The library holds a photograph of a roll of Flamegard, an asbestos cloth whose trademark file gives first use on February 27, 1959, and a shipping tag from the Charlotte Works for a roll of Type 2225 asbestos cloth.³¹⁹ A 1986 reference list names other Southern Asbestos products, such as Thermagard, an asbestos fabric.²⁰ In 1934 Asbestos listed a patent for a loom for forming filled textile tubes, assigned to Southern Asbestos Company by two Charlotte inventors.²¹

What the documents show

An early lawsuit. In October 1924 Asbestos reported a $30,000 damage suit over an employee of the Southern Asbestos Company at Charlotte, claiming that dirt and particles flying through the air at the plant had made him ill; the journal compared it to a case against Turner Brothers Asbestos Company in Rochdale, England.²²

Compensation claims in 1936. Two letters from George S. Fabel, president of Southern Asbestos, to Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, are among the Sumner Simpson Papers. On December 9, 1936, Fabel wrote that a number of cases against his company in Charlotte had been postponed by the Industrial Commission until January 5, 1937, and that they were "defended by us and several insurance companies."²³ The defense attorneys wanted to interview "reliable employees" who worked in the card room at Raybestos-Manhattan's Charleston, South Carolina, plant. Fabel explained that employees had testified that the dust removing equipment at Charleston before 1934 "had advantages over the one we have at Charlotte," and that he believed this was the attorneys' chief motive.²³ On December 18, 1936, Fabel sent Simpson a reprint of an article by Dr. Shull of Charlotte, passed on, he wrote, at the request of a Mr. Schluter so that Simpson could get Dr. Gardner's reaction for the benefit of the industry.²⁴ Fabel wrote that many of the employees in the 77 cases listed in the article had worked for Southern Asbestos, most of them also for Carolina Asbestos and for Raybestos-Manhattan's Charleston plant.²⁴

Later lawsuits. Southern Asbestos was named as a defendant in White v. Johns-Manville Corp. (Fourth Circuit, 1981), brought by Newport News shipyard workers, in which the court held that admiralty law applied to their claims, and as a supplier-defendant in DeCosse v. Armstrong Cork Co. (Minnesota, 1982).²⁵²⁶ Our case-law library names it in four decisions from 1981 and 1982.²⁷

Bankruptcy and trust

Our library has no trust page for Southern Asbestos. Under the 1959 conveyance, H. K. Porter Company assumed its liabilities.⁵ H. K. Porter Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991. The captions of two New Jersey Supreme Court decisions of the early 1990s name Southern Textile Corporation as successor to Southern Asbestos Company, and H. K. Porter Company as successor to both; a caption records how the plaintiffs named the parties, not a finding by the court.²⁸²⁹ The 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases lists Southern Textile Co. as a subsidiary of H. K. Porter, but does not connect it to Southern Asbestos.³⁰³¹

References

1. Asbestos magazine, January 1941, p. 44
2. Asbestos magazine, January 1976, p. 36
3. Flamegard (Southern Asbestos), product page
4. Asbestos magazine, April 1929, p. 60
5. Southern Asbestos Company General Conveyance and Assumption of Liabilities to H. K. Porter (1959), ACL Doc 13166
6. Asbestos magazine, November 1920, p. 58
7. Asbestos magazine, December 1927, p. 49
8. Asbestos magazine, October 1928, p. 48
9. Asbestos magazine, December 1928, p. 49
10. Asbestos magazine, September 1929, p. 59
11. Asbestos magazine, August 1931, p. 54
12. Asbestos magazine, October 1935, p. 38
13. Asbestos magazine, February 1930, p. 52
14. Asbestos magazine, December 1934, p. 38
15. Asbestos magazine, April 1951, p. 38
16. Asbestos magazine, March 1932, p. 48
17. Asbestos magazine, May 1945, p. 36
18. Asbestos magazine, March 1951, p. 20
19. Label: Asbestos cloth roll tag, Type Cloth 2225 (Southern Asbestos Company, Charlotte Works), ACL Doc 20247
20. Thermagard (Southern Asbestos Co.), product page
21. Asbestos magazine, August 1934, p. 39
22. Asbestos magazine, October 1924, p. 44
23. G. S. Fabel to Sumner Simpson, December 9, 1936, ACL Doc 13303
24. George S. Fabel to Sumner Simpson, December 18, 1936, ACL Doc 13311
25. White v. Johns-Manville Corp. (4th Cir. 1981)
26. DeCosse v. Armstrong Cork Co. (Minnesota Supreme Court, 1982)
27. Southern Asbestos Company, company page
28. Landrigan v. Celotex Corp. (New Jersey Supreme Court, 127 N.J. 404, 1992), caption
29. Coffman v. Keene Corp. (New Jersey Supreme Court, 133 N.J. 581, 1993), caption
30. 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.
31. 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.

Asbestos products

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

• Covergard (Southern Asbestos Co.)
• Flamegard (Southern Asbestos)
• Gardian Line (Southern Asbestos Co.)
• Soundgard (Southern Asbestos Co.)
• Splashgard (Southern Asbestos Co.)
• Thermagard (Southern Asbestos Co.)
• Type Cloth 2225 Com (Southern Asbestos)
• Weldgard (Southern Asbestos Co.)

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say Southern Asbestos Company ran.

• Southern Asbestos Company plant at Bennettsville, South Carolina
• Southern Asbestos Company plant at Charlotte, North Carolina

Court cases

4 court decisions in our case-law library name Southern Asbestos Company as a defendant, newest first.

• Staiano v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1982)
• DeCosse v. Armstrong Cork Co. (1982)
• Matter of Steinhardt v. JohnsManville Corp. (1981)
• White v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1981)

In our library

5 documents in our library name Southern Asbestos Company, by collection.

Where this comes from

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