EDWARDSVILLE – Productivity at the late Randy Gori’s firm returned to normal in February as the firm filed 19 asbestos suits in Madison County Circuit Court.
The firm filed 38 suits there in November and December.
Filings fell to seven in January, including one Gori filed a day before he died.
The total of 26 suits in the first two months dropped the firm from second to fourth among asbestos firms suing in the Madison County court.
John Simmons’s firm filed 72, Timothy Hulla of Napoli Shkolnik filed 30, and the Maune Raichle firm filed 29.
All other firms together filed 24, raising the number of Madison County asbestos suits to 181 in two months.
Although the Simmons firm filed more suits than the Gori firm, the Gori firm sued more defendants.
An average Simmons complaint, from Feb. 11 to March 5, named 21 defendants.
An average complaint of the Gori firm in that period named 71 defendants.
Former members of those firms reflected the same pattern.
An average complaint of former Gori lawyer Ben Schmickle, now with SWMW, named 71 defendants.
An average complaint of Maune Raichle, an offshoot of the Simmons firm, named 24 defendants.
Allyson Romani, in the local office of the Shrader firm from Texas, topped them all with 88 defendants per complaint.
At the other extreme, Hulla’s average complaint named five and a half defendants.
He sometimes sues Metropolitan Life and no one else.
Asbestos suits generally include Met Life, on a claim that it concealed the risks of asbestos exposure around the middle of the 20th Century.
Among the 71 most recent complaints that identified the state where plaintiffs lived, Illinois residents filed five.
Seven plaintiffs filed from Florida, six each from California and Michigan, five from Indiana, four each from New York and Wisconsin, and three from Tennessee.
Residents of Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado filed two each.
Single suits came from Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Utah, Maine, Iowa, and New Mexico.
From last November through March 5, asbestos suits accounted for 69 percent of all filings in the county’s civil law division.