The Corporate Truth Squad (CTS) Alert is a project of USAction. The CTS Alert highlights how our civil justice system gives ordinary citizens the power to stand up against corporations that commit fraud, abuse or other wrongdoing. We will distribute the CTS Alert regularly to all state legislators, Members of Congress and the media, with documentary evidence of corporate indifference to predictable illness, injury and death, uncovered by ordinary citizens seeking justice through the courts.
The American asbestos industry and insurance companies – according to their own internal records – were indifferent to the asbestos poisoning of generations of American workers for decades. In a 1967 memo, for example, one Armstrong employee writes as follows:
I really wonder if we have been sufficiently realistic in our thinking concerning asbestosis. Originally, we half-way assumed that only those with a high intake of alcohol contacted [sic] the disease, and that most of them were quite happy to live on compensation without further effort…. I think we owe our workmen every effort to investigate and to see if we can avoid this disease, which is bound to be somewhere between partly disabling and fatal.
Yet, according to court records, the company did not move to investigate or stop the exposure to asbestos of their workers.
Legislation pending in the Senate, S. 1125, would end all asbestos litigation so no jury will see the overwhelming evidence – such as the 1967 memo quoted above – that asbestos companies and their insurers knew the hazards of asbestos. These companies have denied and challenged all liability claims for 25 years and may never be held fully accountable.
Case Study – Armstrong World Industries
Court records show that Armstrong World Industries produced highly dangerous asbestos-containing products as early as the 1940s and that they had knowledge of the dangers posed to workers from asbestos exposure at least as early as 1954.
Armstrong and asbestos: They knew and hid the truth
The true picture of Armstrong’s knowledge of the connection between asbestos exposure and illness or death emerges in the 1987 lawsuit, referred to above, that was brought by three insurance companies. Aetna, along with Travelers and Commercial Union, argued they owed no compensation for asbestos illness because "Armstrong intended to cause injury when they purposefully employed men to work with products they knew would result in asbestos-related disease and death."
The insurance companies included in the court record a 1954 workman's compensation decision in the first claim against Armstrong based on asbestos exposure. According to the individual from the Industrial Accident Board that investigated the claim:
I find, therefore, that the asbestos dust which the employee inhaled at his work resulted in asbestosis. This, I find, constitutes a personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment. I find further that the asbestosis caused a lung malignancy which resulted in his death on December 3, 1952.
Armstrong works for Senate bail out bill:
Armstrong World Industries has joined with other asbestos manufacturers and their insurers in pushing to create a new national asbestos trust fund under S. 1125. Armstrong argues that legislation is needed to reduce the number of claims against them even though they could have prevented the claims if they had taken steps decades ago to protect their workers and others exposed to asbestos. Under the legislation pending in the Senate, Armstrong’s obligations would be reduced from $1.6 billion to only $732 million over 27 years. Other asbestos manufacturers and their insurers would get similar breaks under S. 1125.
Armstrong thrives in bankruptcy reorganization:
Armstrong chose to go through bankruptcy to reorganize its assets so it could compensate its workers and others exposed to asbestos. It has continued to thrive despite having gone through bankruptcy; in fact, to the financial world Armstrong World Industries presents a picture of itself as a healthy, viable company. Armstrong emphasizes $3 billion in annual sales, its 15,700 employees busy at 58 plants in 14 countries.
Clearly, Armstrong believes it continues to be a healthy company, so there is no need to bail it out of commitments it already has made to workers and others it knowingly exposed to asbestos.
If S. 1125 becomes law, the betrayal to workers and others knowingly exposed to asbestos will be complete. First, manufacturers and their insurers exposed them to asbestos and then they denied liability for exposing them to a deadly product. Finally, after fighting these companies and reaching a fair deal in court, Congress wants to take this compensation away from these individuals and their families.
S. 1125 is not just bad law, it is a grave injustice.
For more information contact Helen Gonzales at 202-624-1730 or email hgonzales@usaction.org. Please visit USAction at www.usaction.org.
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