Frederick Mannheim takes on Xerxes workers’ claims

Frederick Manheim’s decision to take on claims by Xerxes workers reopens a case he had already lost and gives new legal purpose to evidence of long-hidden illness and insurance manipulation. Recruited by V. I. Warshawski after her investigation uncovers material connecting Humboldt Chemical to health problems dating back to 1955, Manheim agrees to consider organizing claims for hundreds of former employees and possibly current ones. His commitment is consequential but not impulsive: he accepts the work while making verification, expert advice, and further investigation the first steps.

The Earlier Case and Its Defeat

Manheim had represented Joey Pankowski and Steve Ferraro in a workers’ compensation suit seeking indemnity payments. The men believed their illnesses resulted from exposure to Xerxine, and Manheim moved quickly because he was unsure how long either would live. He first approached Humboldt Chemical, but when the company would not negotiate, he filed suit. If the workers had won after their deaths, their families could still have received indemnity payments, a substantial financial difference for Pankowski’s family, which included many children.

The case received an early docket, but the speed of the process could not overcome the company’s defenses. Both men smoked, Pankowski drank heavily, and both had spent their lives in South Chicago, where poor air quality offered another possible explanation for their illnesses. Humboldt Chemical argued that the evidence could not distinguish harm from Xerxine from harm caused by smoking or the wider environment. It also argued that the men had worked at the plant before Xerxine’s toxicity was known, so the company had operated according to the medical knowledge then available. The court rejected the workers’ case; Manheim later consulted a skilled appellate lawyer, who saw no viable basis for appeal.

The prospect of an appeal had not been free of pressure. After the case, while an appeal was under consideration, Manheim received a threatening phone call that referred generally to the dangers of using the appellate system without naming the case. He did not take the threat to the state’s attorney. Instead, it made him angry, and he pressed in several directions to build an appeal. His efforts still foundered on the lack of a legal basis. The episode helps explain why Warshawski’s later proposal is not merely a fresh assignment: it offers a chance to revisit a defeat that Manheim had been unable to turn around, under circumstances in which intimidation had also shadowed the legal process.

Evidence That Changes the Case

A document in Nancy Cleghorn’s files offered an initially obscure connection. Dated 1963, it was a letter to Mariners Rest Life Assurance Company stating that Jurshak & Parma had become fiduciaries for Humboldt Chemical’s Xerxes plant. An attached actuarial study described Xerxes’s losses as comparable to those of similar companies in the area and sought the same rate consideration. The paperwork looked routine to Warshawski, but its age and lack of an obvious connection to Nancy’s environmental work made it difficult to dismiss.

When Warshawski later showed the document to Manheim, he could see a possible insurance significance: Xerxes might have been paying higher rates, and Jurshak might have been trying to persuade Mariners Rest to lower them. That reading remained uncertain until Warshawski connected the report with the company’s history of health claims. Workers had experienced so many health problems and lost so much work time that their health insurance costs rose sharply. Ajax Assurance eventually dropped them after judging their claims too high. A company representative explained that bringing in Jurshak as fiduciary and altering the data was a way to buy time while the company tried to determine and address the problem.

The old report therefore mattered beyond the question of insurance prices. Warshawski concluded that Jurshak had helped Humboldt Chemical present Xerxes’s mortality and illness experience more favorably to the insurer. The company’s earlier defense of the Pankowski and Ferraro suit had depended on uncertainty about whether Xerxine caused their conditions, alongside the argument that the workers’ exposure occurred before its toxicity was known. The newly assembled material suggested a wider history behind that uncertainty: signs of unusually high illness rates had prompted blood studies as early as 1955, while later insurance arrangements concealed or managed the scale of claims. Warshawski’s evidence thus gave Manheim reason to re-examine a case whose original record had failed to establish the connection.

Warshawski’s Proposal

After a late-night investigation left her with sore shoulders, Warshawski called Manheim and identified herself as the detective who had previously asked him about Pankowski and Ferraro. She told him that her discoveries suggested Humboldt Chemical had known the toxic effects of Xerxine as early as 1955. Rather than ask only whether the old verdict could be challenged, she put a much larger task before him: organizing and managing legal action on behalf of hundreds of former Xerxes employees, perhaps including current workers.

Warshawski made the scale of the undertaking explicit. It could consume the next decade of Manheim’s working life. His storefront practice could not manage it alone; he would need researchers, associates, and paralegals. He would also have to contend with powerful lawyers drawn by the possibility of contingency fees and eager to take control of the work. The proposal was not simply that Manheim review a new document, but that he build the capacity to pursue claims on a broad scale.

Manheim had previously described the threat he received while preparing an appeal. Now he acknowledged that the new evidence left him feeling he could not simply preserve his quiet practice and turn away. If the case might be won, he did not believe he could live with passing up the opportunity. He agreed to receive Warshawski’s materials that evening at Lotty Herschel’s home. His answer marked a return to the workers’ cause, but not a claim that success was assured.

A Deliberate Next Phase

At Lotty Herschel’s, Warshawski laid out what she had learned from Dr. Chigwell: the company had pursued blood testing because high illness rates were apparent by 1955. Lotty Herschel sketched the information in Chigwell’s notebooks for Manheim, who was especially interested in what the records contained. The discussion also identified a possible investigative lead: Ajax Assurance had handled Xerxes’s life and health insurance before the 1963 approach to Mariners Rest, so finding out why Ajax dropped the company might illuminate why blood testing began.

Manheim left the meeting with notes, questions, and a defined need for more work. He said he would not act in haste. Before deciding how to proceed, he wanted to check the data, identify the laboratory that conducted the blood work, and consult a specialist in environmental law. Warshawski warned that Gustav Humboldt would not remain passive while facts were gathered and that the laboratory itself might come under pressure. Manheim considered the risk and still accepted the challenge, asking Warshawski for occasional moral support.

The significance of his decision lies in its balance between urgency and caution. The earlier suit had been defeated by competing explanations for the men’s illnesses and by the claim that the company had not known the hazard at the time. The new records made those defenses look less conclusive, but they did not by themselves complete a case. Manheim’s agreement begins the work of testing what the evidence can prove, while enlarging the possible remedy from two workers’ claims to a coordinated effort for a much larger group.