P. Griffith introduced the class ^ of all abelian /?-groups A such that whenever A ^ G// 7 with G torsion-free and Ffree, then G is free. We show that # is closed with respect to subgroups, extensions and direct sums. Moreover we show that the groups A in # can be characterized in terms of filtrations and determine the site of # relative to other natural classes of abelian /?-groups.