Deposition of Joe R. Quinn in Johns-Manville v. United States, Excerpts (1984)

Seventeen pages of excerpts from the deposition of Joe R. Quinn, a former Johns-Manville government area manager, taken in San Antonio, Texas, on September 24, 1984, in Johns-Manville Corporation v. United States (No. C81-4561, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California). Quinn testified that in the late 1960s his job was to "cut the red-tape" at about 44 federal installations in his California region, so that a J-M salesman could make a contact and drop off product literature. He said he never distributed warnings about asbestos to the government, never received J-M training on the health effects of asbestos, and never had contact with anyone in the government about occupational safety and health.

What it shows

The case was one of Johns-Manville's suits against the United States (No. C81-4561 in the federal court in San Francisco and Nos. 465-83C, 1-84C and 688-83C in the U.S. Claims Court), in which J-M sought to make the government share the cost of asbestos claims by shipyard workers. Quinn's testimony bears on what J-M told the Navy and other federal buyers. He said J-M's brochures were the same for the federal government, local governments and private industry, and that "99-percent" of them carried a note that the product met a federal specification. Asked whether he ever gave his salesmen literature on asbestos and health, he said, "No, I just don't remember"; he recalled only that around 1972 or 1973 fabricators of J-M cement boards were told about collection bags and disposal of mill tailings.