Episode 34 — The Asbestos Papers

Episode 34 — The Asbestos Papers

January 1978. Under oath, former plant manager Wilbur Ruff confirmed his company had a policy not to tell workers what their chest X-rays showed. They had a name for it: the “hush hush policy.”

In 1977, in a New Jersey federal court, attorney Karl Asch obtained a discovery order that produced a box of some 6,000 internal documents from Raybestos-Manhattan, spanning the 1920s through the 1940s. A second cache of about 600 more was found in an old safe at the company’s North Charleston, SC plant in 1979. Named for company president Sumner Simpson, the collection became known as the Simpson Papers — “a series of smoking guns,” in one scholar’s words.

Key Takeaways

• Three documents stood out: an October 1, 1935 letter from Simpson to Johns-Manville counsel Vandiver Brown on suppressing asbestosis information; a 1941 memo instructing executives to “conceal” sponsored dust research; and the record of a November 1948 Johns-Manville boardroom meeting where the sponsors of Saranac Laboratory research — research that produced alarming tumor findings in mice — voted unanimously to delete all references to cancer and tumors from the published report.
• Gordon Barnett’s reopened case. A South Carolina insulation worker who died of mesothelioma and lost his case. After the Simpson Papers surfaced, a South Carolina court took the extremely unusual step of granting a new trial. The reviewing judge described “a pattern of denial and disease and attempts at suppression of information... a conscious effort by the industry in the 1930s to downplay, or arguably suppress, the dissemination of information.”
• IARC — 1977. IARC Monographs Volume 14 concluded there was sufficient evidence that all commercial forms of asbestos cause cancer in humans — later formalized as Group 1.
• The scale that followed. By 2002: 730,000+ claimants, ~8,400 defendants, $70B+ spent (RAND). Eventual total cost estimated at $200–265 billion. The longest-running mass tort in American history.

Featured — Dave Foster. Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger & De Llano. His father, a dentist who did masonry on the side, died of an asbestos-related cancer in 1999. Dave’s book Beating the Odds: Surviving Mesothelioma is free to any family facing a new diagnosis. Free consultation at dandell.com.

Resources

• Episode notes and sources: mesotheliomalawyersnearme.com/podcast/episode-34-the-asbestos-papers/
• Full transcript: wikimesothelioma.com/wiki/Asbestos_Podcast_Transcripts
• Previous: EP33 — Project 100,000

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — 52 episodes tracing asbestos from ancient pottery to the 2024 EPA ban. Produced by Danziger & De Llano.

Next — Episode 35: Borel v. Fibreboard. Stepping back four years to the Fifth Circuit decision that created the duty-to-warn doctrine.

Trust timelines and outcomes vary by case. Past results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/ 

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/ 

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/ 

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/ 

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Transcript

S1E34 — The Asbestos Papers

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making · Season 1, Episode 34 · Arc 7: The Truth Emerges, Chapter 5 · Period: 1935–1979

Key Takeaways

• The Simpson Papers were some 6,000 documents the industry couldn't suppress forever. In 1977, attorney Karl Asch, litigating for hundreds of former Raybestos-Manhattan workers in a New Jersey federal court, obtained a court order that produced a box of internal correspondence, memos, and surveys spanning the 1920s through the 1940s. One legal scholar who reviewed them said: "To say they contained a series of smoking guns is an understatement."
• They had a name for the cover-up: the "hush hush policy." In a January 1978 South Carolina deposition, former plant manager Wilbur Ruff confirmed under oath that the company had a policy of not informing workers of chest X-ray findings suggesting asbestosis, pneumoconiosis, or mesothelioma. Nicknaming the practice is evidence it was deliberate policy, not oversight.
• The documents proved intent, in writing. An October 1, 1935 letter from Sumner Simpson to Johns-Manville general counsel Vandiver Brown discussed deliberate suppression of asbestosis information. A 1941 Johns-Manville memo instructed executives to "conceal" sponsored health research. Not "omit." Not "hold." Conceal.
• They voted to delete their own proof of cancer. Multiple companies funded research at Saranac Laboratory in the 1930s. The completed 1948 report confirmed the asbestos-cancer link — roughly 82% of test mice developed tumors. On November 11, 1948, representatives of the sponsoring companies met in the Johns-Manville boardroom in New York City and voted unanimously to delete all references to cancer and tumors from the published report.
• The evidence surfaced in pieces, then in full. The Sumner Simpson letters were first introduced in Episode 20 as fragments. The Simpson Papers represent the complete archive — the same actors, the same conspiracy, now in court as public record. A second cache of about 600 more documents was found in an old safe at the company's North Charleston, South Carolina plant in 1979.
• The papers reopened a dead man's case. After insulation worker Gordon Barnett's lawsuit had failed, an attorney used the newly disclosed documents to persuade a South Carolina court to take the unusual step of reopening the case and granting a new trial. The reviewing circuit judge cited "a conscious effort by the industry in the 1930s to downplay, or arguably suppress, the dissemination of information to employees and the public for the fear of promotion of lawsuits."
• The science became official in 1977. An IARC working group met in Lyon, France, in December 1976; its 1977 publication (Monographs Volume 14) found sufficient evidence that all commercial forms of asbestos cause cancer in humans — later formalized as Group 1, IARC's highest category. The world's leading cancer research authority now directly contradicted the industry's 1948 decision to delete cancer references.
• It became the longest-running mass tort in American history. By 2002, more than 730,000 people had filed asbestos claims in the United States against some 8,400 defendants who had spent more than $70 billion (RAND Institute for Civil Justice, Asbestos Litigation, 2005). Later economists estimated the eventual total cost would land between $200 and $265 billion.

Full Transcript

HOST 1 January 1978. A deposition in a South Carolina courtroom. Wilbur Ruff, former plant manager for an asbestos products company, is under oath. The attorney asks him a question.

HOST 2 What question?

HOST 1 "Was there a policy in the company—not to talk to the employee about chest findings—findings that suggested asbestosis, pneumoconiosis or mesothelioma?"

HOST 2 What did he say?

HOST 1 He said: "Yes, it was policy."

HOST 2 Under oath.

HOST 1 Under oath. In a courtroom. On the record. They had a name for it. The workers who were told nothing about what the X-rays showed, nothing about the dust accumulating in their lungs—they were being managed under something the company called the "hush hush policy."

HOST 2 They named it. They gave a cover-up a nickname. You don't nickname something you did by accident. That's not a communication gap — that's a culture.

HOST 1 They named it. And if that were the only document that emerged in 1977 and 1978, it would have been enough to change the litigation forever. But it wasn't close to the only document.

HOST 2 Today on Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making—

HOST 1 Episode 34: The Asbestos Papers.

HOST 2 The 6,000 documents they couldn't suppress forever.

HOST 2 [SPONSOR BREAK 1 — warmer, slower] Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is brought to you by Danziger & De Llano — thirty years of turning corporate records into family justice, and getting that justice to families in months, not years. dandell.com. That's D-A-N-D-E-L-L.

HOST 1 Last episode, we documented the third betrayal — the legislative one. Vietnam veterans came home to hostility. Project 100,000 recruits were sent into harm's way and came back with nothing. Agent Orange veterans won presumptive VA benefits in 1991. Asbestos veterans didn't. The burden was still on them. It's still on them now.

HOST 2 And while that legislative battle was playing out—

HOST 1 Something was happening in courtrooms. Specifically in a New Jersey federal court in 1977, where an attorney named Karl Asch was litigating on behalf of hundreds of former Raybestos-Manhattan workers. He got a court order to depose the head of Raybestos-Manhattan — one of the largest asbestos manufacturers in America. During discovery, a box of documents was produced.

HOST 2 What was in the box?

HOST 1 Some 6,000 documents. Correspondence, internal memos, and surveys — spanning the 1920s through the 1940s. One legal scholar who reviewed them said: "To say they contained a series of smoking guns is an understatement." The collection became known as the Simpson Papers — named for Sumner Simpson, who was president of Raybestos-Manhattan from 1929 to 1948.

HOST 1 And here's the detail that stays with me. The main box was found in a storage area at Raybestos-Manhattan in the early 1970s. But in 1979, a second cache — about 600 more documents — was found in an old safe at the company's plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.

HOST 2 A safe.

HOST 1 A safe.

HOST 2 Here's the thing. This is the part where somebody calls it a conspiracy theory and rolls their eyes. Except I don't have to theorize. I'm not connecting dots on a corkboard. It's six thousand documents. It's got letterhead. The conspiracy filed its own paperwork — and then locked some of it in a safe.

HOST 1 Wait. Sumner Simpson. That's the name from Episode 20.

HOST 2 The same. In Episode 20 we covered the letters Simpson wrote in the 1930s — "as you know, we have some very confidential knowledge of what is going on in this field."

HOST 1 The letters where the industry discussed what not to publish, what not to report, how to manage the evidence of asbestosis before it became a legal liability.

HOST 2 Minimum of publicity.

HOST 1 Those letters, which existed in fragments in the historical record — they were now in court. All 6,000 documents of them.

HOST 2 What specifically did they show?

HOST 1 Three documents in particular. First: an October 1, 1935 letter from Sumner Simpson to Vandiver Brown — the general counsel for Johns-Manville — discussing the suppression of information about the threats posed by asbestosis. Not accidental omission. Deliberate suppression. In writing.

HOST 2 So that's the intent, on paper, in 1935. What's the second?

HOST 1 Second: a 1941 memorandum from Johns-Manville's general counsel to company executives with instructions to conceal sponsored research on the health effects of inhaling asbestos dust. Conceal. The word they used was conceal.

HOST 2 "Conceal." Not "omit." Not "hold." Conceal — that's a word you choose when you already know exactly what you're hiding. Third?

HOST 1 The third may be the most consequential. In the 1930s, multiple asbestos companies collectively funded research at Saranac Laboratory in New York — ostensibly on tuberculosis. By 1948, the completed Saranac report confirmed the link between asbestos and cancer: in the animal studies, roughly eighty-two percent of the mice developed tumors. That September, the report went to Vandiver Brown at Johns-Manville, marked "utmost confidence." And that November — November 11, 1948 — representatives of the sponsoring companies met in the Johns-Manville boardroom in New York City. They voted. Unanimously. To delete all references to cancer and tumors from the published report.

HOST 2 They funded the research that produced the warning sign — and then held a vote on whether the warning sign could be published. Corporate proof of cancer, filed under "delete." I'd like that on a mug.

HOST 1 And voted no.

HOST 1 And there's a coda. The day after the vote, Brown wrote to one of the other sponsors asking them to return their copies of the unrevised draft. His words: it would be "most unwise to have any copies of the draft report outstanding if the final report is to be different in any substantial respect."

HOST 2 They didn't just edit the report. They tried to collect the evidence that there had been an edit. That's not science. That's a rough draft for a defense strategy.

HOST 2 [SPONSOR BREAK 2 — warmer] That's what Danziger & De Llano does. For thirty years, they've been finding the boxes companies hoped would stay buried — the depositions no one asked for, the memos meant to stay confidential. And here's what that means for a family facing a diagnosis today: the same exposure history that fills those boxes usually qualifies a patient for ten, fifteen, even twenty different asbestos trust funds. The firm maps every one you're eligible for and files them all at the same time — because expedited claims can begin paying out in as little as ninety days. You shouldn't have to wait years for what the documents already prove. dandell.com.

HOST 1 The Simpson Papers changed litigation immediately — and the clearest example is a single case in South Carolina. The case of Gordon Barnett.

HOST 2 Who was he?

HOST 1 Gordon Luther Barnett was an insulation worker. He spent his career around asbestos, and he died of mesothelioma in his sixties. There had been a lawsuit. It had failed. But after the Simpson Papers surfaced in discovery, an attorney used them to ask a South Carolina court to reopen Barnett's case and grant a new trial. The court took what legal commentators called an extremely unusual step: it agreed.

HOST 2 What changed the judge's mind?

HOST 1 The documents. A South Carolina circuit judge read the Simpson Papers and described what they showed, quote: "A pattern of denial and disease and attempts at suppression of information... a conscious effort by the industry in the 1930s to downplay, or arguably suppress, the dissemination of information to employees and the public for the fear of promotion of lawsuits."

HOST 2 A judge said that. In a ruling. About a dead insulation worker who was told nothing — while a boardroom in New York voted on what to delete.

HOST 1 A judge read the documents and wrote that. Barnett didn't live to see it. But his case is the one where the buried paper trail became, on the record, the reason a court reopened its doors.

HOST 2 And 1977 also brought something else. Something independent of the litigation.

HOST 1 The working group that had met in Lyon, France, in December 1976 — the International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC — published its findings in 1977. Volume 14 of the IARC Monographs. They had reviewed the full body of evidence: the animal studies, the occupational cohort data, the case series, the epidemiology.

HOST 2 What was the conclusion?

HOST 1 That there was sufficient evidence that all commercial forms of asbestos — chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, actinolite, anthophyllite, tremolite — cause cancer in humans. Sufficient evidence. Not suspected. Not probable. Sufficient. It's the classification IARC would later formalize as Group 1 — its highest category, the same one it uses for tobacco smoke and plutonium.

HOST 2 "Sufficient evidence." The scientists needed a working group in Lyon to say it out loud in 1977. The companies had sufficient evidence in their own filing cabinet in 1948 — eighty-two percent of the mice. They just voted to delete it.

HOST 2 Twelve years after Selikoff's 1964 conference. Four years after a Texas insulation worker named Clarence Borel changed what a court could hold a manufacturer to.

HOST 1 Thirteen years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. After 3.4 million Americans were sent onto ships the Navy documented as containing asbestos throughout. After all of it — the global scientific body formally recorded what workers had known in their bones for decades.

HOST 2 The industry funded research confirming this. In the 1930s.

HOST 1 And voted to suppress it in 1948. And ran the "hush hush policy" for decades. And now — in 1977 and 1978 — all of that was in court. In the public record. 6,000 documents of it.

HOST 2 What does this mean for the families?

HOST 1 It means the argument the industry had been running for forty years — "we didn't know" — was finished. The Simpson Papers proved they had known. Documented that they had known. Voted on what to do with what they knew. The legal landscape shifted. Thousands of lawsuits that might have been dismissed under "state of the art" defenses suddenly had a very different evidence base.

HOST 2 How many lawsuits?

HOST 1 By 2002, more than 730,000 people had filed asbestos claims in the United States — against some 8,400 defendants who together had spent more than 70 billion dollars. The RAND Institute for Civil Justice called it the longest-running mass tort in American history. Later economists estimated the eventual total cost would land somewhere between 200 and 265 billion dollars.

HOST 2 Seven hundred and thirty thousand people. And it starts with a box in a storage room — and a second one in a safe in North Charleston.

HOST 1 It starts with people deciding, in writing, that the safest thing to do with proof of cancer was to delete it.

HOST 2 And for families today?

HOST 1 The documents don't age. The evidence base that reopened Gordon Barnett's case in the late 1970s is still part of the record. Mesothelioma litigation draws on these same papers, these same corporate archives, this same chain of documented knowing. Families today still benefit from the evidentiary chain that began surfacing in a New Jersey federal court in 1977.

HOST 2 [SPONSOR BREAK 3 — warmer, slower] That work has a name at Danziger & De Llano: Dave Foster. Dave's father was a dentist. Built his practice. Also did masonry work on the side, mixing asbestos into mortar on weekends. Came home covered in dust. In 1999, the diagnosis came: an asbestos-related cancer. Dave watched his father fight it. His kids never met their grandfather. Dave left his career and joined Danziger & De Llano as Executive Director of patient advocacy — and he compiled the stories of people who survived mesothelioma. The book is called Beating the Odds: Surviving Mesothelioma. It's available on Amazon, but Dave gives it free to any family facing a new diagnosis.

HOST 1 Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano founded this firm in 1995. Nearly two billion dollars recovered. Over a thousand families.

HOST 2 [warmer] And Dave will tell you himself — the families he works with need help while they can still use it. So the firm doesn't file one claim and wait. They file across every trust your history qualifies for at the same time, so compensation can arrive in months, not years — when it matters most.

HOST 2 [direct] Free consultation, seven days a week. Ask for the book. dandell.com — D-A-N-D-E-L-L.

HOST 1 You've been listening to Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making. Episode 34: The Asbestos Papers.

HOST 2 Research, writing, and production for this series is supported by Danziger & De Llano, a national mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly two billion dollars recovered for victims and their families.

HOST 1 Next time, we step back four years — because before the Simpson Papers could open the floodgates, one Texas courtroom had to create the doctrine that made those papers explosive. Borel v. Fibreboard. Clarence Borel was an insulation worker in Texas for thirty-three years. He died of mesothelioma in 1970. His widow Thelma took over the lawsuit. The attorney who brought the case — Ward Stephenson — died three days before the Fifth Circuit decision. But he knew he'd won. The decision that opened the floodgates. The verdict that invented modern asbestos litigation. Episode 35.

HOST 2 Thank you for listening.

HOST 1 Thank you for listening.

Post-Credits Banter (Off-Mic)

HOST 2 "Yes, it was policy." Under oath.

HOST 1 They called it the hush hush policy. They had a name for it.

HOST 2 And they funded the Saranac research that produced the tumor findings. Eight of eleven mice in the long-fiber group.

HOST 1 Then voted in 1948 to delete all references to cancer and tumors.

HOST 2 The word conceal was in the 1941 memo. Not omit. Not delay. Conceal.

HOST 1 Which is why a judge reopened Gordon Barnett's case.

HOST 2 And they found 600 more documents in a safe. An actual safe.

HOST 1 In North Charleston. 1979.

HOST 2 Dave's kids never met their grandfather.

HOST 1 He mixed asbestos into mortar on weekends and came home covered in it.

HOST 2 And now Dave gives the book away for free.

HOST 1 Yeah.

Named Entities:

Category-Entity-Role / Context-People | Wilbur Ruff | Former plant manager for an asbestos products company. In a January 1978 South Carolina deposition, confirmed under oath that the company had a policy of not informing workers of chest X-ray findings suggesting asbestosis, pneumoconiosis, or mesothelioma — a policy the company internally called the "hush hush policy."
| Karl Asch | Plaintiffs' attorney who, in 1977, litigated on behalf of hundreds of former Raybestos-Manhattan workers in a New Jersey federal court and obtained the court order that led to the production of the Simpson Papers.
| Sumner Simpson | President of Raybestos-Manhattan from 1929 to 1948. The document collection is named for him. Author of the October 1, 1935 letter to Vandiver Brown discussing suppression of asbestosis information. First introduced in Episode 20.
| Vandiver Brown | General counsel for Johns-Manville and recipient of the October 1, 1935 Simpson letter. Received the completed Saranac report in September 1948 marked "utmost confidence," and the day after the November 11, 1948 vote wrote asking a co-sponsor to return unrevised draft copies.
| Gordon Luther Barnett | Insulation worker who died of mesothelioma in his sixties. After his lawsuit initially failed, an attorney used the Simpson Papers to persuade a South Carolina court to reopen the case and grant a new trial.
| Dave Foster | Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger & De Llano. His father, a dentist who also did masonry work mixing asbestos into mortar, died of an asbestos-related cancer in 1999. Compiled the survivor-stories book Beating the Odds: Surviving Mesothelioma.
| Paul Danziger & Rod De Llano | Founders of Danziger & De Llano (1995).

Organizations | Raybestos-Manhattan | One of the largest asbestos manufacturers in America; source of the Simpson Papers.
| Johns-Manville | Major asbestos manufacturer whose general counsel authored the 1941 "conceal" memorandum and hosted the November 11, 1948 vote in its New York City boardroom.
| Saranac Laboratory | New York research facility funded by multiple asbestos companies in the 1930s. Its completed 1948 report confirmed the asbestos–cancer link (~82% of test mice with tumors).
| International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) | WHO agency whose working group met in Lyon, France, in December 1976 and published Volume 14 of its Monographs in 1977, finding sufficient evidence that all commercial forms of asbestos cause cancer in humans.
| RAND Institute for Civil Justice | Source of the asbestos-litigation statistics cited in this episode.
| Danziger & De Llano | National mesothelioma law firm and series sponsor. Founded 1995 by Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano. Nearly $2 billion recovered. dandell.com.

Places | North Charleston, South Carolina | Raybestos-Manhattan plant where roughly 600 additional documents were found in an old safe in 1979.
| New Jersey federal court | Venue of Karl Asch's 1977 litigation that produced the Simpson Papers.
| Lyon, France | Site of the December 1976 IARC working group meeting.

Key figures | ~6,000 / ~600 | Documents in the main Simpson Papers box (1920s–1940s); additional documents found in the North Charleston safe in 1979.
| ~82% | Share of test mice that developed tumors in the completed 1948 Saranac study.
| 730,000 / $200–265B | U.S. asbestos claimants by 2002 and projected total U.S. asbestos litigation cost (RAND Institute for Civil Justice).