Document RpQyEvaG16L0OBj1vgj6ar3Ln
FILE NAME Marbletite PMM
DATE 1987 Dec 15 DOC PMM002
DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Legal - Deposition of John Cowie
IN RE Twenty
Attached Schedule
Ge
22
Asbestos
Cases Listed on
)
Reported by
Christine Sammaro RPR CM
December 15 1987
SUDSUDSUD
Sclafani Williams Court Reporters Inc.
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Tampa Horida 33602
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EXHIBIT
Net
1 APPEARANCES
INNOI IN INNOI OI wee
, , Counsel for 22 Plaintiffs
MR CHARLES P. ERICKSON 3
Motley Loadholt Richard & Poole
Post Office Box 365
;
=
Barnwell South Carolina 29812
P.A.
5 Counsel for all Dade County Plaintiffs MR ALAN K. PETRINE
6
Colson Hicks & Bidson P.A.
200 South Biscayne Boulevard
7
Miami Florida 33131-2310
3 Counsel for Defendant Wellington
. KURT M. SPENGLER
3
Hannah Marsee Beik & Voght P.A.
Suite 505. Landmark Center II 10 10
225 East Robinson Street
Orlando Florida 32801
11
.
i Counsel for Defendant Marbletite
12
MR FRANK D. NEWMAN
Nene 13
13
Wallace Engels Pertnoy
330 Biscayne Boulevard
& Martin
P.A.
Miami Florida 33132
: Counsel for Defendant Basic Inc
15
MR HAROLD E. MORLAN II
we
Baker & Hostetler P.A.
Post Office Box 112 .
Orlando Florida 32802
17
18
19
h
20
1
Counsel for Defendant American MS CAROLINE EMERY TABAS
Energy
Knecht & Knecht P.A.
Suite 411
2600 Douglas Road
Coral Gables Florida 33134
22
22
|
|
Counsel for Defendant W. R. Grace
MS CAROLYN J. HOUSE
:
Butler & Burnette P.A.
Bayport Plaza- Suite 1100 6200 Courtney Campbell Causeway Tampa Florida 33607-1458
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IN DE X
2
3
4 {| WITNESS
EXAMINATION
Called by the Defendant
PAGE NO
6 JOHN COWIE
7
Direct Newman ....e005 5
Cross Erickson ...see6. 39
8
Cross Petrine 72
9
10 |
Recross Erickson 86
Redirect Newman 88
11
Recross House 88
12
Recross cont'd Erickson 89
13
Recross cont'd Petrine 90
pe
14
Recross cont'd Erickson 91
wer
15
16
Signature Page
.euevere
93
17
Notarial Certificate 94
ne
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Lawyer's Notes
19
20 |!
21
INDEX TO EXHIBITS
22 DEFENDANT'S EXHIBITS NOS 1-7 FOR ID
Tr P. 33
23
Documents
: DEFENDANT'S EXHIBITS NOS 8
Tr P. 79
ar
Document
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Computer Assisted
Photocopy attached
FOR ID
Photocopy attached
Transcription
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IN RE Twenty 22 Asbestos Cases Listed on
| Attached Schedule
10
11 |
-
{{
12
VIDEO DEPOSITION OF JOHN COWIE
13
PURSUANT TO NOTICE for the taking of the
14 deposition of JOHN COWIE upon oral examination in the i$ t
15 | styled cause G t
16 || for the purposes of
at the instance of the Defendant discovery or use at trial or both
17 pursuant to Florida Rules of Civil Procedure
18 proceedings therefor were held before Christine
19 Sammaro Registered Professional Reporter Certificate
20 of Merit and Notary Public in and for the State of
21. Florida at large at Polk County Courthouse Winter
if
22
| 23
2325 ! 4
Haven Florida on December 15 1987 commencing at
1:00 p.m.
THEREUPON the following proceedings were
had and taken
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MR the
3 Manufacturing
NEWMAN
My name is Frank Newman
I
defendant Marbletite
Company and I will be asking
questions
examination of Mr. Cowie on direct
4
5
MS TABAS My name is Carolyn Tabas I'm
6 from the Knecht & Knecht law firm and I'm here on
7 behalf of American Energy MR PETRINE My name is Alan Petrine
I'm
with the law firm of Colson Hicks and Eidson from
Miami
and I represent the Dade County plaintiffs
MR ERICKSON My name is Charles Erickson
I represent the twenty plaintiffs in this action
I'm from the law firm of Motley Loadholt Richardson
enry and Poole in South Carolina andI will be ce
15 ff examining Mr. Cowie
ne
16
MR SPENGLER Kurt Spengler from Hannah
meee
Morlan e 17 Marsee Beik & Voght for the Wellington defendants
18 MR MORLAN I'm Hal of the firm of
Baker and Hostetler representing Basic Inc.
i
JOHN COWIE called as a
witness by the Defendant having been first
duly sworn testified as follows
DIRECT EXAMINATION
By Frank Newman Esq
Q.
Mr. Cowie if -
:
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1 A. I'm too old to say anything else
6
e
2 us
Q. where
Mr. Cowie give us you live please
your
full
name
and
tell
4 A. Okay My name is John Martin Cowie I live
5 at 112 Patterson Drive Auburndale Florida
6
Q.
That's in Polk County Florida right
7
A.
In Polk County
8 Q. Could you tell us what your age is
:
9
A.
Yeah Eighty
What 10
Q.
type of work are you in these days
11
A.
These days
12
Q.
Yes
13 A.
I'm bringing up kids I go to football
.
H
14 games and you know -~ +
| 15 Q. You're not -- you're not otherwise engaged :
16
in +-
| 17 A. No. I'm not engaged in any making | 18 thing I'm personally retired They say it's
19 retired but I don't believe it really Anybody
20 that's i
21fi sorry
got I
two kids is not retired really should be looking at you
I'm
|
23
were
Q.
you
That's born
all
right
Eighty years old
Where j
24
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| 25
A.
Scotland
.
Q.
When did you come to the United States
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material they call it Emathelite Emathelite
m
Q.
Okay
What
was
the
--
what
product
was --
A.
That is ^ Fuller's Earth And I don't know
if anybody's familiar with Fuller's Earth
It's a
product that's used all over Europe instead of talcum
powder on babies
_
Q.
What is it used for|
A.
It's used as
a
~-
for slip
for w to
10 alleviate the material to go through a pump
13
Q.
And in what products was that Emathelite
12 added to
13|
A
It was added to anybody that wanted to use a
14 pump material which would be -- I'm talking about
15 stucco now
We hadn't developed any other at that
16
17
Q.
Well later on --
18
A.
Later -- --
19
Q.
-- did you develop any other new products
20
A.
Well in 1970
21
Q.
At Marbletite
Not Premix Marbletite We
22 made the Snowflake
23
Q.
How do you -- tell us what Snowflake was
24 first
25
A.
Well Snowflake is a material for use on the
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interior of ceilings to -- in other words -=- what would we call it
3
Q.
First of all is it a stucco
4
A.
No.
5
Q.
Is
it
a
--
6
A.
No it's a material that we -- the dry wall
7 people were coming into the business and our trade was
completely changing And I made two materials but I
made for - with asbestos as you say it about two
10 percent
Two percent
11
Q.
In the Snowflake product
12
A.
In the Snowflake products
13
Q.
How do you recall the year that the
14 Snowflake was --
15 |
16 the
A.
Well
-- late '69
that's quite easy
We
we bought Marbletite
only
had
bought
17
Q.
Okay
18
A.
I mean Premix
19
Q.
Let me stop you right there
20
A.
Louie Ferry had bought Premix in the
21 meantime
22
Q.
.
Now not all these people know the names 1
23 | are familiar with 24 || about
the names
that you're
talking
25
A.
Oh they aren't
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.Q
The name of the company that you went to
work for --
A.
Was Premix Products
Q.
1- was Premix Products
A.
Yeah
Q.
Did there come a time after you went to work
for them when Premix acquired a company called
Marbletite
A.
Sixty -- the late 1691
Q.
And where -- at what facility was the
product Snowflake manufactured
A.
At Marbletite
A young chemist and I made
we
it so you know we developed it together
I'm not
any genius
I don't want to get the idea you know
that --
Q.
You had some help
A.
I had some help
18
Q.
How was Snowflake applied and to what part
19 of a building would it be applied
20
A.
It would be applied on the ceilings and the
21 interior
It was developed for the reason that the He
22 it was cheaper
23
Q.
Did the Premix company provide any of the
24 equipment used the guns used to apply this --
29
A.
They bought the guns at that time
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24
2
A.
Right
3
Q.
~
acquired another company
4
A. We acquired another company out of
50 California that made the Glover Guns
6
Q.
After the Premix product was TH the
7 Snowflake product was introduced to the market what
8 became the top two or three products of Premix
|
9
A.
Would be still Marblecrete We changed the
10 name of Marblecote to Marbletite and Snowflake
11
Q.
Did these products make up the bulk of the
12 sales of the company
Nee
13
A.
Well I don't know exactly but I know it
14 added quite a bit F the Snowflake went over quite
15 good in the first two years
16
Q.
Now did any of the stucco products -- when
17 you went to work for Premix in 1968 did any of the
18 stucco products contain asbestos
19
A.
No.
To explain the reason why I added the
20 Emathelite I never saw the advantage of using a very
21 ff expensive material asbestos in a stucco material
22 Emathelite which I had used in Europe was under that
23 name the Fuller's Earth it was always called
24
Q.
And that is Mw
25
A.
And that is the only thing you can use in
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stucco
And I also took it down to Miami University
to have -- to see if it would strengthen when I used
it
And I found out it did
We didn't have that
knowledge in England at that time
Q.
As a plasterer ~~ as a working plasterer
with the tools and as a foreman or supervisor did
you ever see -- during the course of your career did
you ever see plasterers adding asbestos to a stucco
product
10
A.
Oh definitely All plasterers make their
11 own idea of what a material should be Everyone --
12 they definitely have an idea
Don't all use
13 asbestos
Lots of them put lime more than what they
14 should
You know they all want to make it easy
You
15 know it slips better with all that lime
16
Q.
Going back to the Snowflake product now
17 that had a percentage of asbestos in it did it not
18
A.
Yeah
I changed it to
19
Q.
But initally
--
20
A.
Initially it had asbestos in the amount of
21
two percent if it was that amount but I think it
22 approximately came out that way There's thirteen
23 other materials in the Snowflake
Q.
Did there come a time when you sought to
remove the asbestos from these products
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A.
Well in 1974 the article came up in the
stucco manufacturer's bulletin about asbestos At
that time I was looking for a new material to
substitute I eventually found it in that year
1974
5 I think
Yeah because I refreshed my memory on
6 that 7 that
" and a
It's called Hedmen fiber
And it's approved - I had
I can tell you
it approved by
OSHA
letter to that effect from a gentleman up in
Atlanta Gentry I think his name is
I'm not sure
10 I'm not good on names
I sort of forget
11
Q.
So you ~--
12
A.
And I changed it and I put that in all the
ont 13 spray materials that were used in the interior Now
14 we also had the material PVL
I forgot that we had
15 that when I first went to Premix And that was a
.16 spray material made for the plasterer only
17
Q.
Okay
18 A But that was a lime product so that -~
19
Q.
Did that have any asbestos in it
A.
No.
There's no need to put ~~ lime is a
20
21 material that slides if you -- you know slips
222
anywhere
so
it's
a
-~
most
of
it was lime and the
aggregate could be -~ comes out of the ground
24
Q.
Gypsum
25 A. No. no Perlite Perlite It's a
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mineral
That's put in there not so much for anything
but to give you a texture on the ceiling that
everybody likes a little something -- I'm sorry I'm
looking around The guy warned me
Q.
By what year were -- was asbestos removed
from ~~
.6
A.
Well as I said I developed another
material
You know I had other chemists come into --
I'm not a chemist
But I had other chemists that came
10 in there and they changed a lot of products around
11 during that period But in the meantime I had a
12 position where I was quite free of anybody and I
13 decided to investigate what I wanted to put in there
14 So when I got all the chemists out and everything
15
there and that was 1974
Q.
At the time that you changed the formulas in
1974 can you tell me what kind of inventories the
.
18 company was carrying at that time
Do you happen
19
to
-~-
20
A.
Well on those products we didn't Keri that
21
very much of a product
I was making it up in the
22 Orlando plant And at that time I went up there to
23 change that plant all around because in our business
24 cement and plaster products in the air can have a
25 tendency to set up some of the other products and
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tee ate
contaminate So we changed everything that was in
cement and down to the Miami plant and brought
everything up to Orlando
And there we made Snowflake
and everything else so we made a material that's
called One Coat Veneer And that's a substitute for
dry wall
It's put on another type of dry wall board
gives a thin coat of plaster about an eighth -~
Q.
Did that product have any asbestos in it
A.
No. There's no reason to use asbestos
10 It's not going to burn
It doesn't burn
That's
11 about you can use asbestos for
12
Q.
Now I came up and visited with you in
13 October of this year is that correct
14
A-
Yes
Q.
And at that time I asked you to look for any
16 letters or files or anything you may have ~~
17
A.
hum
18
Q.
-~ relative to the subject of this asbestos
19 litigation and you did that for me
20
A.
Yeah I gave you a few
Q.
Okay
I'm going to ask you simply to
22 identify each of these documents for that purpose
23 identification only and just tell us briefly what
24 they are and how they got in your files and how long
25 they've been there
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