CHARLOTTE – Asbestos lawyers with an opportunity to prove they don’t routinely pull off double recoveries elected not to try, according to tables that Georgia Pacific entity Bestwall filed in bankruptcy court on Sept. 8.
Bestwall attached the tables to a motion for enforcement of an order requiring answers to questionnaires about exposure claims and settlements.
Attorney Garland Cassada of Charlotte, representing Bestwall, asked bankruptcy Judge Laura Beyer for a hearing on Oct. 19.
Cassada wrote that it would be a permissible sanction to disallow the claims of those who haven’t complied with her order.
He claims that among more than 800 law firms he found four that complied.
Georgia Pacific created Bestwall in 2017, by assigning assets to a New GP entity and assigning liabilities and insurance proceeds to Bestwall.
Bestwall petitioned for bankruptcy protection and asked for trial to estimate future liabilities, which Beyer granted.
In response, asbestos firms claimed Bestwall could estimate future liabilities on the basis of past settlements.
Bestwall rejected the idea, claiming that fraud inflated the settlements.
It also claimed many plaintiffs alleged one set of exposures in civil courts and another in private trusts.
Beyer authorized questionnaires in March, with a July 26 deadline for responses.
She heard a short summary of the results at a hearing on Aug. 31, and Cassada followed up with the enforcement motion.
One of the tables attached to Cassada’s motion showed that lawyers for 1,272 clients with current claims against Georgia Pacific didn’t respond at all.
Among local firms in the group the table showed 19 clients at Walton Telken, 14 at Goldenberg Heller, ten at Maune Raichle, eight each at John Simmons’s firm and Bilbrey Law Offices, seven each at Flint Law Firm and Napoli Shkolnik, three each at Cates Mahoney and Stephen Tillery’s firm, and two at the Gori firm.
Another table showed lawyers for 1,802 clients returned questionnaires but objected to substantive questions.
The Gori firm objected to 848 questionnaires, Shrader and Associates objected to 348, Maune Raichle objected to 343, and the SWMW firm objected to 199.
Another table showed that responses for 524 clients provided some answers but skipped questions at the heart of the matter.
Simmons dominated the group with 377 clients.
The group also included 31 clients at O’Brien Law Firm and one each from Maune Raichle, Napoli Shkolnik, and the Gori firm.
Separate from the tables, Cassada counted 1,582 pending mesothelioma claimants in Bestwall’s database who responded that they have no such claims.
That could mean the questionnaire already saved millions for Bestwall.
Cassada claims about 130 clients alleged that they settled, and he wrote that Bestwall would compare their claims to its records.
He claims Bestwall received about 800 responses from claimants who weren’t in its database, and included them in its summary.
He claims experts would assess how many of the 800 claims arose after Bestwall started bankruptcy proceedings and stayed civil litigation.
He claims Bestwall got nothing about some clients but received stacks of transcripts about others, which he stated he’d use at trial.
“The debtor has already commenced its efforts to obtain compliant responses consensually, which the debtor hopes will result in improvements in the number of deficiencies,” Cassada wrote.
He wrote that his tables didn’t include Buck Law Firm, Simon Greenstone Panatier, Coady Law Firm, and Harrison Davis Steakley Morrison Jones. He claims the overall quality of their responses suggested a strong likelihood of consensual resolution of deficiencies.