ABSTRACT
When six disabled cotton textile workers with byssinosis filed a lawsuit in 1979 in Alabama over their disease, one of the defendants they named was Liberty Mutual Insurance Company of Boston—the major carrier of workers’ compensation insurance for the textile industry. The other defendants were some key executives of the firms, including a company physician, for whom they worked. The suit, Williams v. Lanier et al. [1] , helped pry open the private doors of the textile industry, to give a view of the behind-the-scenes attitudes and actions of owners and their professional associates through the 1950s and 1960s where cotton dust was at issue.
