CHARLOTTE - U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laura Beyer laid a $402,817.70 penalty on St. Louis asbestos firm Maune Raichle on Aug. 31, to reimburse a Georgia Pacific entity for defending an Illinois lawsuit the firm filed in violation of an order she entered.
At a hearing Tuesday she called the suit egregious, contumacious, and contemptuous.
The suit aimed to overturn her order allowing Georgia Pacific entity Bestwall to investigate possible fraud in past settlements.
John Simmons’s firm in Alton and the Chicago firm of Cooney and Conway joined the suit at first but pulled out before Beyer could penalize them.
The Gori firm in Edwardsville also joined the action at first but Beyer didn’t sanction the firm because its role amounted only to the filing of a declaration.
Georgia Pacific created Bestwall in 2017, and assigned its asbestos liabilities to it. Bestwall petitioned for bankruptcy in order to resolve outstanding and future liabilities; it then moved for a hearing to estimate its liabilities, and plaintiff firms opposed it.
Plaintiff attorneys argued that Bestwall should estimate liabilities according to past settlements.
Bestwall argued Georgia Pacific paid more than it should have paid for settlements. It claimed some plaintiffs alleged one set of exposure in civil courts and one set of exposures in private proceedings of trusts that former defendants created.
In March, Beyer ruled that all firms suing Georgia Pacific should submit a personal injury questionnaire for each client, and set a July 26 deadline.
Former U.S. district judge Patrick Murphy filed suit for the Illinois firms, claiming Bestwall couldn’t gather the information without serving a subpoena on each plaintiff.
District Judge Staci Yandle dismissed the suit with prejudice on July 22.
“Judge Beyer has stayed in her lane and I will stay in mine,” she said.
At Beyer’s hearing on Aug. 31, Bestwall counsel Richard Worf said Bestwall received 4,157 questionnaire responses from a database of 5,737 claimants. He said 1,580 didn’t respond and 804 objected.
Worf also said objections came from Maune Raichle, the Gori firm of Edwardsville, SWMW of Edwardsville, Mark Lanier of Texas and Shrader and Associates of Texas.
He said 1,582 respondents asserted they have no pending mesothelioma claims.
“That’s a very important function of the questionnaire,” he said.
Bestwall will file a motion about the responses by Sept. 8, he said.