Raytech (Raymark, Raybestos-Manhattan) Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked on brakes and clutches, worked in a shipyard or industrial plant around asbestos packing, or worked in a plant that made friction products or asbestos textiles, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the Raybestos-Manhattan name may come up in your case. Raybestos-Manhattan was a major maker of asbestos brake linings and clutch facings. In 1982 it renamed itself Raymark Industries, and the courts later made a related company, Raytech, answer for its asbestos claims.

Raytech went through bankruptcy and set up a bankruptcy trust that pays claims for Raymark and Raybestos-Manhattan products. You can file against it. But we want to be honest with you up front. The Raytech trust pays only 1.35% of a claim's scheduled value, so a mesothelioma claim brings about $2,430. Its value is as one piece of a larger set of claims.

You don't need old receipts or brand names to start. Piecing together the work history is our job, not yours.

What Raybestos-Manhattan made, and who used it

Raybestos-Manhattan was formed in 1929 by joining the Raybestos Company, Manhattan Rubber of Passaic, New Jersey, the United States Asbestos Company of Manheim, Pennsylvania, and the General Asbestos & Rubber Company of Charleston, South Carolina. In answers it gave in asbestos lawsuits around 1980, as compiled by The Travelers Insurance Company, Raybestos-Manhattan listed friction-products plants at Stratford, Connecticut; Manheim, Pennsylvania; and Crawfordsville, Indiana, and industrial-products plants at North Charleston, South Carolina, and Marshville, North Carolina. Besides brake linings and clutch facings, documents from that period describe its asbestos packings, textiles, insulation blankets and tape. You can read more in our history of Raybestos-Manhattan.

Its president in the 1930s, Sumner Simpson, left correspondence with Johns-Manville in the 1930s is part of the Sumner Simpson Papers, among the best-known evidence of what the asbestos industry knew and when.

The people most likely to have been exposed include:

• Auto, truck and equipment mechanics, who blew out brake drums, ground and fitted linings, and replaced clutches. See auto mechanics and brake workers and brakes, clutches and friction products.
• Shipyard workers, pipefitters and millwrights who cut and installed asbestos packing. See shipyards and gaskets and packing.
• Workers in Raybestos-Manhattan's own plants, making friction products, packings and textiles. See asbestos textiles.

The trust makes some of this easier to prove. For job sites in the automotive and mechanical friction industry and in shipbuilding and ship repair, it doesn't require separate proof that Raymark products were there. It also keeps an approved job site list and a list of about 150 presumed occupations, such as mechanic, boilermaker, pipefitter, insulator and asbestos textile weaver.

Raytech, Raymark and the bankruptcy

The company names here can be confusing, so here is the short version.

• 1982: Raybestos-Manhattan renamed itself Raymark Industries.
• 1986–1988: In a series of corporate deals, a new company, Raytech, took over Raymark's most profitable businesses and then let go of Raymark itself. The bankruptcy court later described these deals as meant to protect those businesses from Raymark's asbestos lawsuits.
• 1988 onward: The courts didn't accept that. A federal court in Oregon held in 1988 that Raytech was Raymark's successor and responsible for its asbestos claims, and other courts followed. In 1998 the bankruptcy court held that Raytech's asbestos liability was unlimited.

Raytech filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 10, 1989, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Connecticut (Case No. 5-89-00293). Raymark Industries filed its own Chapter 11 case in Utah in 1998, and that case was moved to Connecticut and handled alongside Raytech's. The bankruptcy court confirmed Raytech's plan on August 31, 2000, and the plan took effect on April 18, 2001. It set up the Raytech Corporation Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust, a Section 524(g) trust, which received most of the reorganized company's stock. Raymark's plan feeds the same trust; there is no separate Raymark trust. Raytech's businesses were later sold, and the company was dissolved, with its remaining assets going to the trust. Claims Processing Facility, Inc. (CPF) handles the claims.

What the Raytech trust pays

The trust's Trust Distribution Procedures set four disease categories that it pays, each with a fixed scheduled value. The procedures call for those values to be adjusted for inflation every three years. The latest adjustment, announced July 31, 2024, applies to all outstanding and future offers.

Source: The Raytech Corporation Third Amended and Restated Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust Distribution Procedures (conformed copy, as amended through June 1, 2023), §5.2(b), Schedule A and Schedule B, posted on CPF's website; the trustees' letter to claimants' counsel of July 31, 2024 (adjusted values for 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024). The right-hand column is our arithmetic: current value times 1.35%.

The trust's payment records match the adjustments. In 2022, at a 0.92% payment percentage, it paid 671 mesothelioma claims a total of $943,426, or $1,406 each: 0.92% of the 2021 value of $152,799.

"Other cancer" covers cancer of the larynx, pharynx, stomach, esophagus, colon or rectum. Lung cancer and other cancer claims also need signs of asbestos disease in the lungs or chest lining. The procedures list two more categories, for milder asbestosis and pleural disease, but the trust has never set values for them and, as of its claim-filing instructions, does not review or pay them.

A claim where Raymark products caused at least 75% of the person's asbestos exposure can ask to be treated as an "Extraordinary" claim, worth up to five times the scheduled value, times the payment percentage.

The payment percentage

A trust pays a set share of each claim's value so it can keep paying people diagnosed years from now. The Raytech trust's share has been small from the start:

• 2.0% from January 15, 2010
• 0.84% from November 29, 2011
• 0.92% from February 1, 2018
• 1.35% from November 14, 2024

1.35% is the rate in the trust's latest annual report, for 2025, filed in April 2026. The trust's notices are here.

The trust's finances

The trust had about $20.6 million in net claimants' equity at the end of 2025, down from about $51 million in 2010. It reported paying about $1.8 million to $1.9 million to claimants in 2025; its claims report and its financial statements give slightly different totals. Year-by-year detail is in the Raytech trust's annual reports, each with our plain-English summary.

How a Raytech claim works

Every claim is paid at its scheduled value. The trust checks the claim against fixed medical and exposure rules and pays the scheduled value for that category times the payment percentage. There is no individual review to seek a higher value, apart from the Extraordinary claims described above. The values and the payment percentage can't be disputed. A claimant can dispute only the category, or whether the claim qualifies as Extraordinary or for faster payment, within six months: either at a conference with the trustees, whose decision is final, or through the trust's alternative dispute resolution. Only a claimant who goes through that process and rejects a non-binding arbitration award can then sue the trust. Claims are reviewed in the order received and paid in the order settled, using a first-in, first-out queue. Mesothelioma claims, and others where the person is not expected to live six months, can be paid sooner.

Exposure must come before December 31, 1982. Every category requires exposure to Raytech or Raymark asbestos products, or to their operations, before December 31, 1982. For mesothelioma, any credible exposure in that period counts. For the other categories, the trust also requires:

• six months of that exposure, and
• for other cancer and severe asbestosis, "Significant Occupational Exposure": at least five years in a job with regular asbestos exposure. See occupational exposure.

Proof can be ordinary evidence. The trust accepts a sworn statement from the claimant, a coworker or (if the worker has died) a family member. It also accepts invoices, construction records, the person's industry and occupation, or other credible evidence.

Family members can file. The claim form takes claims from people exposed through a family member's work, such as dust brought home on clothes, for mesothelioma and lung cancer. See take-home exposure.

Filing deadlines and fee. The trust doesn't raise statute-of-limitations defenses, except for claims that were already too late when Raytech filed in 1989. Its own deadline for anyone diagnosed after October 1, 2006 is three years from diagnosis. There is a $75 filing fee, refunded if the claimant accepts the trust's offer. See statute of limitations. Wrongful-death and state deadlines can be shorter, so call soon.

Why a Raytech claim is one piece of a bigger case

At 1.35%, a Raytech mesothelioma claim pays about $2,430. We file it when the facts support it, but it is not where the recovery comes from.

Mechanics used many brands of brake linings and clutches, and shipyard and plant workers handled packing, gaskets and insulation from many makers. Many of those companies also went bankrupt and left trusts, several of which pay a much larger share, and other makers are still in business and can be sued. The same diagnosis and work history may support claims against other trusts and companies, and each one that pays does so separately.

That's why our first step is a full work history, not a single brand name. To learn more, read our guide to how asbestos trust claims work and our page on mesothelioma lawsuits.