UM Grace Case

The government knew about the dangers of asbestos for many years before taking W.R. Grace to court, W.R. Grace lead defense attorney David Bernick asserted during his cross-examination of Frank Kover. The company also complied with the government’s past information requests, Bernick argued.
Kover, a retired Environmental Protection Agency industrial hygienist, testified on documents from [...]

Defense attorney David Bernick spent the morning using his cross-examination of Robert Locke to argue that publication of W.R. Grace’s hamster study was unnecessary. It merely corroborated existing studies that showed tremolite to cause cancer in laboratory animals, he said.
Similar studies, such as the Johns-Manville study, which Locke said he knew about, had been [...]

Continuing his cross-examination of Robert Locke, defense attorney David Bernick attempted to cast doubt on the completeness of Locke’s previous testimony, his general recollection of his own words and writings, and the relevance of various studies reviewed by Locke and prosecutor Kris McLean under direct examination.
Some of the most antagonistic exchanges seen so far in [...]

Wednesday morning began with prosecution attorney Kris McLean continuing direct examination of Mr. Locke, a former construction manager for W.R. Grace.  The direct examination focused mostly on a letter Mr. Locke sent to Mr. Eaton in February of 1977 (government exhibit 66).  The letter was also copied to Favorito, McCord, and Wolter.  This multi-page letter [...]

Robert Locke continued testimony after morning break and explained several memos and handwritten letters he wrote to as well as received from Grace executives in which he expressed his concern over air sampling and animal tests and their results in 1976. The prosecution entered several exhibits into evidence. Only one was not admitted. That [...]

  Daniel Teitelbaum and Julie Yang spent the early morning session on Thursday testifying about medical evidence and the creation of a key research study used by Grace.
Teitelbaum was the founder of Poison Lab, a Denver-based company that did asbestos testing for W.R. Grace in the late ’70s. e was a former Grace researcher and [...]

Heyman Duecker’s testimony came to an end this morning, and he’ll probably never want to hear about hamsters again.
Defense attorneys David Krakoff and Carolyn Kubota finished the cross examination of Duecker, a former research chemist who did work for Grace, asking him questions about various studies, letters and memos. Duecker, a quiet man in his [...]

   The defense continued analyzing the data and letters associated with the 1970s study conducted by chemist and former W.R. Grace employee Heyman Duecker in the W.R. Grace trial Wednesday morning .
The cross-examination came from defense attorney David Krakoff, who represents Henry Eschenbach.  He focused his questions on establishing the processes that went into getting [...]

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Cassidy continued his direct examination of Dr. H.C. Duecker this afternoon. Cassidy led Duecker through several memos and letters from the late 1970’s concerning the “Hamster Study,” a prolonged experiment measuring the health effects of tremolite asbestos on hamsters. Dr. Julie Yang and Duecker, Grace employees during that time frame, provided [...]