Nicolet Industries, Inc

Nicolet Industries was an asbestos company that by 1956 brought together the Norristown Magnesia & Asbestos Company, the Sall Mountain Company and the Nicolet asbestos mine in Quebec. It made asbestos paper, pipe line felt, millboard, insulation, gasketing, yarn and asbestos-cement sheet at plants in Ambler and Norristown, Pennsylvania, Hamilton, Ohio, and Hollister, California, and took over the remaining manufacturing operations of Keasbey & Mattison. By 1988 Nicolet, Inc. was in bankruptcy, and no asbestos trust for it appears in our library.

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

The Nicolet mine

In October 1929 Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, reported that the Norristown Magnesia & Asbestos Company's work "at the Nicolet Property in the Danville District, Canada," was "progressing very rapidly," with preparations being made to install crushers; operation had started only that June.¹ By June 1930 the journal reported "the new mill at Nicolet is now operating and producing a good grade of shingle fibre and paper stock."⁷ Advertisements in 1930 offered fibre from Nicolet Asbestos Mines Limited for shingles, millboard, paper and cements, with Alex. R. Martin as president and offices at 25 Broad Street, New York.⁸ In 1958 the company advertised "The Nicolet Asbestos Mine, Norbestos (via Warwick), Que." through the Asbestos Fibre Division of Nicolet Industries.⁹ In the data sheet The Travelers Insurance Company compiled for a 1980 asbestos seminar, mostly from defendants' answers to interrogatories, Nicolet gave its mining through Nicolet Asbestos Mines Ltd. as running from 1939 to 1968, a later start than the 1929 and 1930 reports above.³² The sheet names its later fiber suppliers as Asbestos Corporation, Ltd. from 1968 to 1973 and Canadian Johns-Manville and Lake Asbestos of Quebec from December 1973, with small amounts from Finland and Mozambique.³²

The company also looked abroad for fibre. The U.S. Bureau of Mines reported in 1970 that Nicolet Industries had a 70 percent share in a chrysotile mine under development near Medellín, Colombia.¹⁰ A Union Carbide letter of December 1971 records an inquiry from Nicolet about asbestos mining properties and supply.¹¹

Building the company

In 1951 Asbestos named Victor Mauck as president of Nicolet Industries, Inc., "formerly Gama Industries, Inc."¹² The journal's review of 1956 called "the first important event of the year" the merger of Norristown Magnesia and Asbestos Co., Sall Mountain Co. of Hamilton, Ohio, and Valley Forge Metals Co. of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, into Nicolet Industries, Inc. of New York City.² The same year Guy George Gabrielson, chairman of the board, announced the election of Guy George Gabrielson, Jr., as president, succeeding Mauck, who retired at 82; the company then listed its Norristown Asbestos Division, Sall Mountain Division, Valley Forge Metals Division and its subsidiary Nicolet Asbestos Mines, Limited, of Warwick, Quebec.³ Sall Mountain advertised asbestos millboard, aircell, pipe covering, cloth, gaskets and cements.¹³

By 1958 the company's executive offices and research laboratories were at Florham Park, New Jersey.¹⁴ In 1964 it acquired the physical assets of Protective Papers, which by 1969 was a Nicolet subsidiary at Hollister, California, making specialty paper products and asbestos pipe wrap.¹⁵¹⁶ The 1980 Travelers sheet gave Nicolet's principal place of business as Broad Axe, Pennsylvania, and its plants as Norristown "Since 1939," Hamilton "Since 1962," and Ambler; the Hamilton date is later than the 1956 merger of the Hamilton company Sall Mountain described above.³² In 1968 Nicolet moved its offices to "its main plant location in Ambler, Pennsylvania."⁴ In 1969 it opened a new facility at Hamilton, Ohio, that saturated asbestos pipe line felt with coal tar or asphalt.¹⁷

The Ambler plant and the products

The Ambler plant had been Keasbey & Mattison's.⁶ A history printed in Asbestos in 1971 quotes the chairman of Turner & Newall, which owned Keasbey & Mattison, as saying it sold the pipe plants to Certain-teed Products and "the remaining manufacturing operations to Nicolet."⁵ According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, what Nicolet acquired when Keasbey & Mattison was liquidated in 1962 was its Industrial Products Division.³¹ The Travelers sheet says Nicolet bought Keasbey & Mattison's assets "but did not assume its liabilities."³² A Nicolet interrogatory answer filed with the sheet says Nicolet sold asbestos products under the "K & M" brand, with sub-brands including Kaytherm (spelled "Kaythern") and Hytemp, from September 28, 1962 through December 31, 1964, and none under those names afterward; it gives the Norristown brand as used up to 1965 and the Salmo brand up to 1957.³³ In 1965 the journal reported that a press at Nicolet's Ambler plant made the blanks for Monobestos, Resistal, KolorMate and Ebonized Asbestos, and that the company had put "a giant 6,900-ton monolithic board-producing press into use at its Ambler plant."⁶ The Navy's lists of qualified products later carried Kaytherm and Hy-Temp insulation, both made at Ambler, under Nicolet's name.⁶

Nicolet's own labels in our library name asbestos in its millboard, pipe line felt, yarn and rubber sheet packing.^18192021 In 1967 the company signed a joint option agreement with a German firm for the manufacture of high-performance asbestos yarn, and early in 1968 Philip A. Meyer, a Nicolet vice president, wrote that the company had introduced a new asbestos yarn called Nicolon.²²²³

What the documents show

In 1969 the Asbestos Textile Institute, the textile makers' trade group, approved Nicolet's application for regular membership.²⁴ The 1980 Travelers sheet, by contrast, answers "No" to whether Nicolet was a member of the Institute.³² The sheet gives 1964 as Nicolet's first knowledge of hazards, "After Dr. Irving J. Selikoff's paper" on asbestosis among insulation workers, and 1972 as its first labeling.³² It says Nicolet denied sales to Long Beach Naval Shipyard, and that its Katherm 1700 pipe covering was on the Navy's qualified products list.³²³⁴ On July 19, 1974, Gabrielson, Jr., as Nicolet's president, wrote to William Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, about two suits brought by workers at Pittsburgh Corning's Tyler, Texas, plant in which the Asbestos Textile Institute had been named a defendant.²⁵ He warned that, "if not properly defended," the cases might hold that the health hazards of asbestos "were known long before that actually could have been the case," and proposed that asbestos companies join to intervene; "The stakes are high," he wrote.²⁵ In 1977 the EPA issued Nicolet a water discharge permit for its Pennsylvania operations, which a Union Carbide memo summarized as requiring control equipment by 1981 and zero discharge of asbestos fibres longer than 5 microns.²⁶

Our case-law library holds 24 court decisions that name Nicolet as a defendant.²⁷ In one, Migues v. Nicolet Industries (1980), a federal decision in Beaumont, Texas, Nicolet was the only defendant left at trial after thirteen others settled; the jury awarded the widow of an insulation worker $3,000,000, and the court found the award excessive and offered a reduction to $1.5 million.²⁸

Bankruptcy

In 1988 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided United States v. Nicolet, Inc., 857 F.2d 202, a case about the automatic stay that bankruptcy places on proceedings against a debtor; a 2022 federal decision in our library cites it for the rule that the stay does not stop the government's police and regulatory actions.²⁹ Our library holds no record of an asbestos trust for Nicolet, and Nicolet was still a defendant in a New York case over asbestos dental liners, decided on appeal in 2010, in which the jury did not hold it liable.³⁰

References

1. Asbestos, October 1929, p. 56
2. Asbestos, December 1956, p. 6
3. Asbestos, March 1956, p. 50
4. Asbestos, November 1968, p. 16
5. Asbestos, February 1971, p. 12
6. Keasbey & Mattison Co. / Nicolet Industries, Inc. plant at Ambler, Pennsylvania
7. Asbestos, June 1930, p. 46
8. Asbestos, July 1930, p. 33
9. Asbestos, April 1958, p. 15
10. Chrysotile mine, near Medellín, Colombia
11. J. W. Rawlings to J. J. Dobbins and to John L. Myers (1971–1972), UC-2251, p. 2
12. Asbestos, March 1951, p. 44 (in What Asbestos Magazine Told the Industry About Dust and Disease)
13. Asbestos, May 1956, p. 53
14. Asbestos, March 1958, p. 1
15. Asbestos, December 1964, p. 4
16. Asbestos, October 1969, p. 49
17. Asbestos, August 1969, p. 18
18. Label: Nicolet Asbestos Millboard MB-1 (1958)
19. Label: NICOFIL asbestos yarn (1967)
20. Label: Nicolet #8 Tufbestos asbestos pipe line felt
21. Label: Hy-Swell asbestos rubber sheet packing
22. Asbestos, December 1967, p. 4
23. Asbestos, January 1968, p. 6
24. Asbestos, July 1969, p. 32
25. Guy G. Gabrielson, Jr. of Nicolet to William Simpson of Raybestos-Manhattan on the Tyler, Texas Suits (1974)
26. H. B. Rhodes to C. R. Allenbach and Others on Revised EPA Effluent Guidelines (1977), UC-3553
27. Nicolet Industries, Inc., company page
28. Migues v. Nicolet Industries, Inc. (E.D. Tex. 1980)
29. In re LTL Management LLC (2022), citing United States v. Nicolet, Inc., 857 F.2d 202 (3d Cir. 1988)
30. Penn v. Amchem Products (2010)
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. 159.
32. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Nicolet Industries Product Information, p. 3
33. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Nicolet Industries Product Information, p. 2
34. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Nicolet Industries Product Information, p. 4

Asbestos products

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

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say Nicolet Industries, Inc ran.

• Keasbey & Mattison Co. / Nicolet Industries, Inc. plant at Ambler, Pennsylvania

Mines

Asbestos mines the documents name Nicolet Industries, Inc as running or owning.

• Asbestos Colombianas find, Department of Antioquia, Colombia
• Campomento deposit, Colombia
• Chrysotile mine, near Medellin, Colombia

Court cases

24 court decisions in our case-law library name Nicolet Industries, Inc as a defendant, newest first.

• Penn v. Amchem Products (2010)
• Nelson v. Keene Corp. (1996)
• Fisher v. Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corp. (1989)
• Blazek v. Nicolet, Inc. (1988)
• Case v. Fibreboard Corp. (1987)
• Marshall v. Celotex Corp. (1987)
• Lavelle v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (1987)
• In re Hawaii Federal Asbestos Cases (1986)
• Silver v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1986)
• Seckular v. Celotex (1986)
• Jenkins v. Raymark Industries, Inc. (1986)
• Knauer v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1986)
• Graffagnino v. Fibreboard Corp. (1985)
• Celotex Corp. v. Copeland (1985)
• Lowe v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1985)
• Hargrave v. Fibreboard Corp. (1983)
• Wedgeworth v. Fibreboard Corp. (1983)
• Staiano v. Johns-Manville Corp. (1982)
• Hardy v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp. (1982)
• DeCosse v. Armstrong Cork Co. (1982)
• Migues v. Fibreboard Corp. (1981)
• Hardy v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp. (1981)
• Migues v. Nicolet Industries, Inc. (1980)
• Mooney v. Fibreboard Corp. (1980)

In our library

12 documents in our library name Nicolet Industries, Inc, by collection.

In the Union Carbide documents

Nicolet Industries, Inc is named in 14 Union Carbide documents dated 1964 to 2001 (14 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• Oleesky and Mohr, Handbook of Reinforced Plastics of the Society of the Plastics Industry, Chapter III-2 'Asbestos-Reinforced Plastics' (1964) UC-5292 (mentioned)
• M. M. Swetonic (AIA/NA) to Member Companies on the June 22 Meeting about the OSHA Asbestos Standards (1972) UC-5186 (mentioned)
• W. N. Johnson Transmittal to F. H. Larrison and E. A. Piersall of AIA/NA Memos on FDA and Bureau of Mines Asbestos Actions (1972) UC-4282 (mentioned)
• W. N. Johnson to F. H. Larrison and E. A. Piersall Forwarding AIA/NA Memos on the FDA Asbestos Task Force and the Bureau of Mines Asbestos Dust Standard (1972) UC-5096 (mentioned)
• H. B. Rhodes to R. H. Mereness Transmitting Draft Progress Report of the AIA/NA Ad Hoc Committee on Construction, with Related AIA/NA Memos (1976) UC-4105 (mentioned)
• H. B. Rhodes to C. R. Allenbach and Others on Revised EPA Effluent Guidelines, with EPA Notice of Issuance of NPDES Permits to Nicolet and Certain-Teed (1977) UC-3553 (mentioned)
• Asbestos Information Association Executive Committee Meeting Minutes (April 9, 1980) UC-4870 (mentioned)
• J. E. Walsh Customer Call Reports on Great Gulf (Houston) and Greenville Rubber & Gasket (1979-1982) UC-687 (mentioned)
• Summonses and Amended Complaints in Partain v. North Bros. Co. et al. and Cooper v. North Bros. Co. et al., Naming Union Carbide as Defendant (1983) UC-1411 (mentioned)
• United States Gypsum Company's Responses to Standard Interrogatories in Karal v. Atlas Turner, Inc., with Exhibits 1-9 (2001) UC-5456 (mentioned)
• J. W. Rawlings to J. J. Dobbins on Competitors' Price Increases, and to John L. Myers on Nicolat Industries and the 1972 Sales Budget (1971–1972) UC-2251 (mentioned)
• AIA/NA Member Companies, Environmental Control Sub-Committee and Counsel Roster UC-3877 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide File on the AIA/NA Technical Committee, the Standards and Technical Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee for Construction, with H. B. Rhodes Letter to J. J. Gafford (1973-1976) UC-4242 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide's Responses to Plaintiffs' Set No. 46 Interrogatories on Asbestos Exports and Imports at the Ports of Stockton and Sacramento (undated) UC-5327 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Nicolet Industries, Inc, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Nicolet Industries · Nicolet Industries Inc. · Nicolet, Inc · Nicolet · Nicolat Industries · Nicolet Industries, Incorporated · The Nicolet Co.

Where this comes from

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