Pope v. Manville

CourtNorth Carolina Industrial Commission
DecidedJuly 21, 2011
DocketI.C. No. 532319.
StatusPublished

This text of Pope v. Manville (Pope v. Manville) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering North Carolina Industrial Commission primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pope v. Manville, (N.C. Super. Ct. 2011).

Opinion

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The Full Commission is addressing only one limited issue on remand. The North Carolina Court of Appeals instructed the Full Commission to make its findings of fact consistent with its conclusions of law regarding the method of calculating the average weekly wages to be utilized in determining Plaintiff's weekly disability benefit payment under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97-2(5). Based upon the competent evidence of record, the Full Commission amends its prior Opinion and Award as follows: *Page 2

The Full Commission finds as facts and concludes as matters of law the following, which were entered into by the parties as:

STIPULATIONS
1. Plaintiff was employed by Defendant-Employer from on or about January 1, 1949 until January 1, 1950 and again from August 1, 1952 until August 31, 1968. Plaintiff-Employee's Social Security Earning Statement shows Plaintiff receiving wages from Defendant-Employer until June 1969. Plaintiff received severance payments from Defendant-Employer from September 1, 1968 through June 1969.

2. All parties are properly before the North Carolina Industrial Commission and the Industrial Commission has jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject matter of this case. All the parties are bound by and subject to the North Carolina Workers' Compensation Act. All parties have been correctly designated and there is no question as to the misjoinder or nonjoinder of any party.

3. Defendant-Employer Johns Manville Products Corp. had workers' compensation insurance coverage with Defendant-Carrier, St. Paul Travelers, (or its predecessors), from 1963 through 7/1/69.

4. The following was stipulated into evidence at the hearing:

a. Form 18B dated May 24, 2005;

b. Form 61 dated November 11, 2005;

c. Form 33 dated March 24, 2006;

d. From 33R dated April 3, 2006;

e. Defendants' Responses to Plaintiff's First Set of Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents;

*Page 3

f. Plaintiff's itemized Social Security statement of earnings;

g. Plaintiff's medical records.

5. The following exhibits were admitted into evidence at the hearing:

a. Plaintiff's #1, Form 61 in Billy Durham vs. Ray Co.;

b. Plaintiff's #2, Form 61 in Norman Wright vs. Moretti Construction;

c. Plaintiff's #3, picture of loom in weaving dept;

d. Plaintiff's #4, picture of card in carding dept.

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Based on the competent evidence of record, the Full Commission makes the following:

FINDINGS OF FACT
1. Plaintiff is 80 years old. He completed high school in approximately 1946. The majority, if not all of his working career, has been spent in the manufacturing business or as a turkey farmer. As a result of breathing problems, Plaintiff stopped working in September 2003.

2. Plaintiff worked at a manufacturing facility located in Marshville, North Carolina, from 1949 to August 1968 continuously except for about 20 months from 1951 to 1952 when he went into military service. The facility initially was owned by the Union Asbestos and Rubber Company and later purchased by Johns Manville in 1962.

3. Initially, Plaintiff worked as a "spare hand" and did jobs throughout the facility. In 1957, he was promoted to supervisor of the entire yarn manufacturing department of the company. He held this job until he left the company in 1968. As a supervisor, Plaintiff would spend about 90 percent of his time on the plant floor checking the manufacturing process.

4. The facility where Plaintiff worked mixed raw asbestos fibers with either cotton or rayon to form asbestos yarn to be woven into cloth or tape. The raw asbestos would come into *Page 4 the plant in 50-pound bags. The bags would be taken to the "preparation room" to be opened and mixed with either cotton or rayon. Once the asbestos was mixed, it would be taken to the "carding" room where the combined fibers would be pulled to align the fibers. At this point the fiber mixture would go to the spinning department where the fiber mixture would be spun into thin yarn. Next, this thin yarn is taken to the twisting department where these thin threads are twisted together to form a larger type yarn. Once this larger yarn is formed, it is taken to the weaving department where it is made into a cloth-type product.

5. In the preparation room, the workers would put the cotton fiber on the floor, then they would open a 50-pound bag of raw asbestos fibers and dump the fibers onto the cotton by hand and mix the two fibers together. The most common blend of cotton/rayon and asbestos they made was known as a "110 blend" and consisted of 90% asbestos fibers and 10% cotton fibers. This blending process created a lot of dust. During a shift, they would use approximately 30 50-pound bags of asbestos.

6. Once mixed, the fiber mixture would be brought into the carding department in a rolling box. Workers would use their hands and pick up the fibers by "armfuls" and load the fibers into the back of the card machine.

7. The card machines consisted of several rollers pulling the fiber mixture into long strands. There were 12 card machines operating at the same time each creating dust from the fiber mixture. Asbestos, a "short" fiber, would be pulled out of the mixture as it was processed in the rollers and create dust. Because of the different size rollers turning at various speeds pulling at the fiber mixture, a lot of dust was created.

8. The dust created by the card machines looked like dense fog or a snowstorm. Plaintiff indicated that the dust in the air was so bad you could not tell who a person was at the *Page 5 opposite end of the room, 75 feet away. After spending time in the card room, the employees', including Plaintiff's, clothes would be covered with the asbestos fiber mixture.

9. After the asbestos mixture was processed in the card room, it would then be sent to the spinning room. The spinning process was done using high speed spindles twisting the carding product into thread. This process created dust all the time and the area would have to be cleaned 3 or 4 times a day.

10. From the spinning department, the thread went to the spooling department. The spooling process involved the spindles and spools turning at a very high rate of speed and this caused dust to come off the thread which caused the department to look foggy all the time.

11. Once the thread was placed on the larger spools, it was sent to the twisting room. In the twisting room, 120 spindles of thread were spun at a high speed and twisted into a larger thread. This process also created a lot of dust that came from the fiber.

12. Once the thread was twisted, the spindles were sent to the weave room to be made into fabric. In the weave room, the thread would be used in a loom. The loom would hold a number of threads next to one another and then a shuttle would run across these threads carrying another thread thereby "weaving" the threads together. This process, too, created a "fog" of dust.

13. Plaintiff explained in his testimony that all of the departments were contained in one large room with no separating walls and the dust would travel throughout the building, especially due to a dust system on the carding machines that would also move the air in the plant but not remove all the dust.

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Bluebook (online)
Pope v. Manville, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pope-v-manville-ncworkcompcom-2011.