Asbestos Podcast EP34 Transcript

Episode 34: The Asbestos Papers

Full transcript from Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — a 52-episode documentary podcast produced by Danziger & De Llano, LLP.

Episode Information
Series	Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Season	1
Episode	34
Title	The Asbestos Papers
Arc	Arc 7 — The Truth Emerges (Chapter 5 of Arc)
Era Covered	1935–2002 (the Simpson-to-Brown suppression letter through RAND's 2002 litigation-scale accounting), framed through the January 1978 Wilbur Ruff deposition and the 1977 discovery of the Simpson Papers
Produced by	Charles Fletcher
Research and writing	Charles Fletcher with Claude AI
Listen	Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube

Episode Summary

In January 1978, in a South Carolina deposition, former plant manager Wilbur Ruff was asked under oath whether his company had a policy of not telling employees about chest X-ray findings suggestive of asbestosis or mesothelioma. His answer: "Yes, it was policy." The workers were managed under what the company itself called, internally, a "hush hush policy." That single admission was only possible because of what had surfaced a year earlier. In 1977, in a New Jersey federal court, attorney Karl Asch obtained a court order compelling discovery from Raybestos-Manhattan, one of the largest asbestos manufacturers in the country, in litigation on behalf of hundreds of former workers. What came back was a box of roughly 6,000 internal documents — correspondence, memos, and surveys spanning the 1920s through the 1940s. The collection became known as the Simpson Papers, for Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan from 1929 to 1948. A second cache of about 600 more documents turned up in 1979, in an old safe at the company's plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Three documents anchor the episode's case. An October 1, 1935 letter from Simpson to Vandiver Brown, general counsel of Johns-Manville, discussed the deliberate suppression of information about asbestosis. A 1941 memorandum from Johns-Manville's general counsel instructed executives to conceal company-sponsored research into the health effects of asbestos dust. And a 1948 report from Saranac Laboratory — research the industry itself had funded — found that roughly 82 percent of mice in long-fiber asbestos studies 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 next day, Brown wrote asking a fellow sponsor to return copies of the unrevised draft, calling it "most unwise to have any copies of the draft report outstanding if the final report is to be different in any substantial respect." Separately, in 1977, the International Agency for Research on Cancer published Volume 14 of its Monographs, based on a working group that had met in Lyon, France in December 1976, concluding there was "sufficient evidence" that all commercial forms of asbestos cause cancer in humans — a finding IARC would later formalize into its highest classification, Group 1, in Supplement 7 in 1987.

The documents changed litigation immediately. Gordon Luther Barnett, a South Carolina insulation worker who died of mesothelioma, had already lost his case once. After the Simpson Papers surfaced in discovery, an attorney used them to persuade a South Carolina court to reopen the case and grant a new trial — an unusual step the court took after reading the documents. The circuit judge wrote that they showed "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." By 2002, approximately 730,000 people had filed asbestos claims in the United States against some 8,400 defendants, with defendants and insurers together spending a total of $70 billion — what the RAND Institute for Civil Justice called the longest-running mass tort in American history. Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research separately estimated the eventual total cost of asbestos litigation would land between $200 and $265 billion. Peer-reviewed research corroborates the underlying pattern: a case study published in the American Journal of Public Health found the asbestos industry and its insurers "systematically developed and then suppressed" information about asbestos carcinogenicity, delaying warnings to exposed workers, and public-health review literature places credible asbestos warnings as available as early as the 1930s.

Key Takeaways

A former plant manager admitted a "hush hush policy" under oath. In a January 1978 deposition, Wilbur Ruff confirmed the company had a policy of not disclosing chest X-ray findings suggestive of asbestosis or mesothelioma to employees. Roughly 6,000 internal documents surfaced via a 1977 court order. Attorney Karl Asch's discovery request against Raybestos-Manhattan in New Jersey federal court produced the "Simpson Papers," named for company president Sumner Simpson; about 600 more documents were found in a North Charleston, SC safe in 1979. A 1935 letter documents deliberate suppression, in writing. Sumner Simpson's October 1, 1935 letter to Johns-Manville general counsel Vandiver Brown discussed suppressing information about asbestosis; a 1941 memo instructed executives to conceal sponsored health research outright. Companies voted, unanimously, to delete cancer findings from their own funded research. On November 11, 1948, sponsors of the Saranac Laboratory studies — which found tumors in roughly 82 percent of study animals — met in the Johns-Manville boardroom and voted to strip cancer and tumor references from the report; Brown followed up asking for draft copies back. The IARC's 1977 finding was independent of the Simpson Papers litigation. Monographs Volume 14 concluded there was "sufficient evidence" that all commercial asbestos forms cause cancer in humans — Group 1 classification came later, in 1987. A reopened case shows the documents' immediate legal impact. Gordon Luther Barnett's previously failed case was reopened for a new trial after the Simpson Papers surfaced; a South Carolina circuit judge found "a conscious effort by the industry in the 1930s to downplay, or arguably suppress" exposure information. By 2002, asbestos litigation was the largest mass tort in U.S. history. RAND documented approximately 730,000 claimants against some 8,400 defendants, with defendants and insurers spending a total of $70 billion; NBER separately estimated eventual total costs of $200–265 billion. Peer-reviewed research backs the suppression narrative. Published academic case studies describe systematic industry development and suppression of carcinogenicity information, with credible asbestos warnings available as early as the 1930s.

Key Concepts

The Simpson Papers: How the Documents Surfaced

In 1977, attorney Karl Asch was litigating in New Jersey federal court on behalf of hundreds of former Raybestos-Manhattan workers. He obtained a court order compelling the company to produce documents in discovery, and a box of roughly 6,000 internal documents — correspondence, internal memos, and surveys spanning the 1920s through the 1940s — was produced. One legal scholar reviewing the collection described it as containing "a series of smoking guns." The papers became known as the Simpson Papers, for Sumner Simpson, who served as president of Raybestos-Manhattan from 1929 to 1948. A second cache of roughly 600 additional documents was discovered in 1979 in an old safe at the company's plant in North Charleston, South Carolina. The papers were not entirely unknown before 1977 — fragments of Simpson's 1930s correspondence, including his instruction to keep "minimum of publicity" on asbestosis, had already been referenced in earlier litigation — but the 1977 discovery brought the full collection, roughly 6,000 documents, into the public record for the first time.

Three Documents That Proved Knowledge

The episode centers on three specific documents from the collection. First, an October 1, 1935 letter from Sumner Simpson to Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general counsel, discussing the deliberate suppression of information about the health threats of asbestosis — not an accidental omission, but a documented decision. Second, a 1941 memorandum from Johns-Manville's general counsel to company executives instructing them to conceal company-sponsored research into the health effects of inhaling asbestos dust. Third, and most consequential: in the 1930s, multiple asbestos companies jointly funded research at Saranac Laboratory in New York, nominally focused on tuberculosis. By 1948, the completed report found that approximately 82 percent of mice in the long-fiber asbestos studies had developed tumors. The report was sent to Vandiver Brown in September 1948, marked "utmost confidence." 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 following day, Brown wrote to a fellow sponsor asking for the return of unrevised drafts, describing it as "most unwise to have any copies of the draft report outstanding if the final report is to be different in any substantial respect."

Wilbur Ruff and the "Hush Hush Policy"

In January 1978, Wilbur Ruff, a former plant manager for an asbestos products company, testified under oath in a South Carolina deposition. Asked directly whether the company had a policy of not discussing chest X-ray findings suggestive of asbestosis, pneumoconiosis, or mesothelioma with affected employees, Ruff answered: "Yes, it was policy." Internally, the company referred to this practice as its "hush hush policy" — a named, acknowledged practice rather than an informal habit.

Gordon Barnett's Reopened Case

Gordon Luther Barnett was a South Carolina insulation worker who spent his career around asbestos and died of mesothelioma. An earlier lawsuit on his behalf had failed. After the Simpson Papers surfaced in discovery in other litigation, an attorney used the documents to petition a South Carolina court to reopen Barnett's case and grant a new trial — a step legal commentators described as extremely unusual, which the court took. A South Carolina circuit judge, having reviewed the Simpson Papers, wrote that they showed "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."

The IARC's 1977 Finding

Independent of the Simpson Papers litigation, a working group convened by the International Agency for Research on Cancer met in Lyon, France in December 1976 to review the full body of evidence on asbestos and cancer — animal studies, occupational cohort data, case series, and epidemiology. IARC published its conclusions in 1977 as Volume 14 of the IARC Monographs: there was "sufficient evidence" that all commercial forms of asbestos — chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, actinolite, anthophyllite, and tremolite — cause cancer in humans. IARC would not formalize this into its highest classification category, Group 1, until Supplement 7, published in 1987 — a full decade after the 1977 "sufficient evidence" finding.

The Scale of the Litigation

The Simpson Papers undercut the industry's longstanding "we didn't know" defense in courtrooms nationwide, converting "state of the art" arguments into a much weaker position given documented, contemporaneous knowledge. By 2002, approximately 730,000 people had filed asbestos-related claims in the United States against some 8,400 defendants, with defendants and insurers together spending a total of $70 billion — figures the RAND Institute for Civil Justice used to describe asbestos litigation as the longest-running mass tort in American history. Separately, economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated the eventual total cost of asbestos litigation would ultimately reach between $200 and $265 billion — a distinct, later projection from RAND's 2002 accounting, not the same figure restated.

Academic Corroboration

The suppression narrative documented in the Simpson Papers and in Wilbur Ruff's testimony is corroborated by peer-reviewed public health research. A case study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the asbestos industry and its insurers "systematically developed and then suppressed" information about asbestos carcinogenicity, delaying warnings to exposed workers by years. Public health review literature on the history of occupational asbestos regulation similarly frames credible asbestos health warnings as having been available to industry as early as the 1930s.

Frequently Asked Questions

What were the Simpson Papers?

The Simpson Papers were a collection of roughly 6,000 internal documents — correspondence, memos, and surveys spanning the 1920s through the 1940s — produced by Raybestos-Manhattan under a 1977 New Jersey federal court discovery order obtained by attorney Karl Asch. The collection is named for Sumner Simpson, Raybestos-Manhattan's president from 1929 to 1948. A second cache of about 600 more documents was found in a safe at the company's North Charleston, South Carolina plant in 1979.

What did Wilbur Ruff admit under oath?

In a January 1978 deposition, former plant manager Wilbur Ruff was asked whether his company had a policy against telling employees about chest X-ray findings suggestive of asbestosis, pneumoconiosis, or mesothelioma. He answered, "Yes, it was policy" — confirming what the company itself internally called its "hush hush policy."

What did the 1935 Simpson-to-Brown letter say?

On October 1, 1935, Sumner Simpson wrote to Vandiver Brown, general counsel of Johns-Manville, discussing the deliberate suppression of information about the health threats posed by asbestosis. The correspondence is cited in subsequent asbestos litigation as documentary evidence that the industry knew, and chose to suppress, information about the disease.

What happened at the November 1948 boardroom vote?

Multiple asbestos companies had jointly funded research at Saranac Laboratory in New York in the 1930s. By 1948, the resulting report found that roughly 82 percent of mice in long-fiber asbestos studies had 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 version of the report. The next day, Vandiver Brown wrote to a fellow sponsor asking that copies of the unrevised draft be returned, calling it "most unwise" to leave earlier drafts outstanding.

Did the International Agency for Research on Cancer declare asbestos a Group 1 carcinogen in 1977?

No. In 1977, IARC's Monographs Volume 14 — based on a working group that met in Lyon, France in December 1976 — found "sufficient evidence" that all commercial forms of asbestos cause cancer in humans. IARC did not formally classify asbestos under its highest category, Group 1, until Supplement 7 in 1987, a decade later.

Who was Gordon Barnett, and why does his case matter?

Gordon Luther Barnett was a South Carolina insulation worker who died of mesothelioma after an earlier lawsuit on his behalf had failed. Once the Simpson Papers surfaced, an attorney used them to persuade a South Carolina court to reopen Barnett's case and grant a new trial. The circuit judge who reviewed the documents wrote that they showed "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."

How large did asbestos litigation eventually become?

By 2002, approximately 730,000 people had filed asbestos-related claims in the United States against some 8,400 defendants, with defendants and insurers together spending a total of $70 billion — figures the RAND Institute for Civil Justice used to call it the longest-running mass tort in American history. Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research separately projected the eventual total cost of asbestos litigation at $200 to $265 billion.

Is the industry-suppression narrative supported by peer-reviewed research, or only by litigation documents?

Both. In addition to the court-produced Simpson Papers and sworn testimony like Wilbur Ruff's, peer-reviewed public health literature independently supports the suppression narrative — including a case study in the American Journal of Public Health finding the industry and its insurers "systematically developed and then suppressed" carcinogenicity information, and review literature placing credible asbestos warnings as available by the 1930s.

Full Transcript

Cold Open: The Deposition

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.

Sponsor Break 1

Host 2: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is brought to you by Danziger and De Llano — thirty years of turning corporate records into family justice, and getting that justice to families in months, not years. Dan-Dell dot com. That's D-A-N-D-E-L-L.

Last Episode's Thread: The Third Betrayal

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: That's what Danziger and 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. Dan-Dell dot com.

Sponsor Break 2

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.

Sponsor Break 3: Dave Foster's Story

Host 1: That work has a name at Danziger and 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 and De Llano as Executive Director of Patient Support & Medical Assistance — 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 2: Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano founded this firm in 1995. Nearly two billion dollars recovered. Over a thousand families.

Host 1: 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: The consultation is free, seven days a week. Ask for the book. Dan-Dell dot com — D-A-N-D-E-L-L.

Closing and Tease

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 and 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.

External Links

Primary Documents and Legal Records

• Mesothelioma Compensation Options — Danziger & De Llano
• Asbestos Exposure and Mesothelioma — Danziger & De Llano
• Danziger & De Llano, LLP

Case Law and Litigation History

• Lohrmann v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp.
• Jackson v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 727 F.2d 506 (5th Cir. 1984)
• Menssen v. Pneumo Abex Corp.
• Beckwith v. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 185 N.J. Super. 50 (App. Div. 1982)

Research and Academic Sources

• RAND Institute for Civil Justice — Asbestos Litigation (MG-162, 2005)
• NBER — Asbestos and the Future of Mass Litigation
• Lilienfeld — The Silence: The Asbestos Industry and Early Occupational Cancer Research
• IARC Monographs Volume 14 — Asbestos
• National Toxicology Program — Asbestos

Podcast Resources

• Episode 34: The Asbestos Papers — MLNM podcast landing page
• Asbestos Podcast Hub — All episodes
• Episode 34 on Apple Podcasts
• Episode 34 on Spotify
• Episode 34 on YouTube

Series Navigation

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — Arc 7: The Truth Emerges
Previous: Episode 33: Project 100,000	Episode 34: The Asbestos Papers (Arc 7, Chapter 5)	Next: Episode 35: Borel v. Fibreboard

Related Wiki Pages

• Asbestos_Podcast_EP33_Transcript — Project 100,000: Vietnam veterans, Project 100,000, and the Agent Orange legislative parallel
• Asbestos_Podcast_EP35_Transcript — Borel v. Fibreboard: the case that invented modern asbestos litigation
• Johns_Manville_Corporate_History — Corporate history of Johns-Manville, including internal knowledge and litigation record
• David_Foster — Executive Director of Patient Support & Medical Assistance, Danziger & De Llano; author of Beating the Odds: Surviving Mesothelioma
• Asbestos_Trust_Funds — Compensation mechanisms and trust fund filing process
• Asbestos_History_Timeline — Full chronological history of asbestos knowledge, use, and litigation
• The_Asbestos_Podcast — Main podcast page with all episodes

About This Series

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is a 52-episode documentary podcast tracing the complete history of asbestos from 4700 BCE to the 2024 EPA ban. The series is produced by Danziger & De Llano, LLP, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims.

Episode 34 is Chapter 5 of Arc 7 ("The Truth Emerges"). Episode 33 traced the legislative betrayal of Vietnam-era veterans; Episode 34 turns to the courtroom discovery that broke open decades of industry denial — roughly 6,000 internal documents, produced under a 1977 federal court order, proving in the companies' own handwriting that they knew about asbestos-related cancer risk and chose to suppress it. Episode 35 picks up the legal doctrine, four years earlier, that made those documents so consequential once they surfaced.

The Simpson Papers remain foundational to asbestos litigation today. Attorneys still cite the documented, decades-long suppression campaign — the 1935 Simpson-to-Brown letter, the 1941 concealment memo, and the 1948 boardroom vote to delete cancer findings from a company-funded study — as evidence defeating "we didn't know" defenses. By 2002, RAND documented approximately 730,000 asbestos claimants against some 8,400 defendants, with defendants and insurers spending a total of $70 billion — figures RAND called the longest-running mass tort in American history, with NBER separately projecting eventual total costs of $200–265 billion.