Todd Shipyards Corporation

Facility Overview

Todd Shipyards Corporation operated one of the largest commercial ship repair complexes on the Gulf Coast along the Houston Ship Channel in Texas. The facility — originally built as Brown Shipbuilding during World War II — handled repair and overhaul of commercial vessels, tankers, and cargo ships. Ship repair work is among the most asbestos-intensive occupational settings: workers remove old insulation, cut through lagged pipes and boilers, and install replacement materials in confined spaces with minimal ventilation.

Todd operated 12 facilities nationwide, but the Houston Ship Channel yard is the primary subject of documented asbestos litigation in the Southern District of Texas. The yard operated continuously through 1987, when Todd Shipyards Corporation filed for bankruptcy protection. The Houston Ship Channel corridor — a 52-mile industrial waterway — is one of the most heavily documented asbestos exposure zones in the United States, with multiple shipyards, refineries, and petrochemical plants operating in close proximity.

Hansen v. Johns-Manville Products Corp., 734 F.2d 1036 (5th Cir. 1984)

Andrew Hansen began working for Todd Shipyards in 1940 as a pipefitter. His work required him to tear out old asbestos pipe insulation and install new asbestos-containing covering — tasks that generated heavy airborne fiber concentrations in the enclosed spaces of ship engine rooms and boiler compartments. Hansen was later diagnosed with asbestosis and mesothelioma.

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the jury's verdict against Johns-Manville Products Corporation, finding that Johns-Manville's failure to warn of the known hazards of its asbestos products was a proximate cause of Hansen's disease. The court upheld $1,060,000 in compensatory damages and $1,000,000 in punitive damages — one of the landmark early punitive damage awards in asbestos litigation that helped establish the "failure to warn" doctrine that governs product liability claims today.

Herring Pleural Thickening Case (Wash. 2007)

A 2007 Washington Supreme Court case documents Roger Herring, who worked for subcontractors at Todd Shipyards sites during the 1960s and early 1970s. Herring developed pleural thickening — a radiographic marker of asbestos exposure — diagnosed in 1986. The case illustrates that Todd's asbestos exposure extended to subcontractor workers, not only direct employees, and that disease latency commonly exceeds 15–20 years from first exposure.

OSHA 29 CFR 1910.1001 — Asbestos Standard (1972)

OSHA's 1972 asbestos standard for general industry (29 CFR 1910.1001) established permissible exposure limits (PEL) of 5 fibers/cc (8-hour TWA), later tightened to 2 f/cc in 1976 and 0.1 f/cc in 1994. Ship repair operations — including pipe covering removal, boiler lagging, and gasket work — were explicitly covered under the general industry standard. The standard's adoption confirms that federal regulators recognized asbestos exposure in commercial shipyard settings as a known occupational hazard requiring legal controls.

Southern District of Texas asbestos multidistrict litigation dockets document pipefitter, insulator, boilermaker, and electrician exposure at Houston Ship Channel facilities, with Todd Shipyards named in the commercial ship repair cohort. Individual S.D. Tex. MDL docket numbers were not retrieved in this session; attorneys should query PACER for the Houston Ship Channel asbestos MDL (MDL No. 1760) for facility-specific filings.

Asbestos Products Documented at Todd Shipyards

The Hansen opinion names Johns-Manville as the primary product manufacturer. Ship repair work at Todd involved the following asbestos-containing product categories, consistent with the trade exposure patterns documented in the OSHA rulemaking record and S.D. Tex. MDL filings:

Gulf Coast Cluster: Todd vs. Avondale