CHARLOTTE – Bankruptcy Judge Laura Beyer has sanctioned Shrader and Associates mesothelioma firm for $264,000 for failing to answer questions about 330 clients who sued Georgia Pacific.
Beyer plans to enforce the sanctions as setoffs against future settlements between plaintiffs and Georgia Pacific debt entity Bestwall.
Shrader’s website identifies two corporate headquarters, one in Houston and one in Madison County at Maryville.
In an Aug. 8 order, Beyer imposed $800 per client for eight days of contempt at $100 per day.
She sanctioned nine other firms for $57,400, bringing the total to $321,500.
She imposed $12,000 on Provost Umphrey of Beaumont, Texas.
She imposed $5,600 on Karst and Van Oiste, $4,000 on Bailey Cowan, and $1,600 on Mark Lanier’s firm, all in Houston.
She imposed $10,400 on SWMW and $2,400 on the Gori firm, both of Edwardsville, and $800 on Maune Raichle in St. Louis.
She imposed $1,600 on Belluck and Fox in New York City.
On the Shepard firm in Boston, she imposed sanctions for 25 clients at $700 and two at $800 for a total of $19,100.
Georgia Pacific reorganized by dividing into New GP to continue Georgia Pacific operations and Bestwall to resolve asbestos liabilities.
In 2017, Bestwall petitioned for reorganization at bankruptcy court in Charlotte.
Beyer granted a motion to hold an estimation hearing, like a trial, to arrive at a figure for a trust fund.
Plaintiff firms proposed to estimate future settlements by relying on past settlements, but Bestwall claimed fraud inflated past settlements.
Bestwall claimed it needed to know how many plaintiffs alleged one set of exposures in private trusts and another set in civil courts.
Bestwall prepared a questionnaire and Beyer approved it.
At a hearing in April, Bestwall presented a spreadsheet of 493 claimants who hadn’t complied.
Beyer ordered fines and wrote, “The court will determine when, to whom, and at what intervals the daily fine should be paid.”
Plaintiff firms proposed to apply the sanctions as setoffs against future settlements.
Bestwall counsel Richard Worf of Philadelphia opposed setoffs, claiming plaintiffs continued to materially delay the work of Bestwall and other parties.
Worf claimed some firms conducted themselves as if the fines didn’t exist.
Beyer disappointed him by concluding that Bestwall received sufficient responses to the questionnaire for purposes of estimation.
She kept the question of compliance open, setting a Sept. 9 deadline for evidence from claimants who have complied.
She wrote that she’d hear any dispute about who complied on Sept. 22.