EDWARDSVILLE – Democrat judicial candidate Barry Julian, whose wealth was built on asbestos litigation, seeks election as judge in the court where roughly half the country's asbestos litigation plays out.
Julian runs in a judicial subcircuit created in January 2022 by the state legislature, an Act that was passed without public debate and which specifically drew his affluent Edwardsville neighborhood into a working-class district where vacancies would exist this election year.
He runs as a candidate with a “wide range of work experience outside of being a lawyer.” He was a factory worker and a dentist, but says he had to leave that practice after suffering nerve damage in his hands from an accident. He says he became a lawyer “to help cancer patients who were exposed to toxic chemicals through no fault of their own, get the settlements they deserved.”
Behrens
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He also runs as a former associate judge. Julian came out of retirement as an asbestos lawyer in February 2019 from Naples, Florida, returning to serve on the Madison County bench. He’d still be seated had he not left in December 2020, two and a half years prior to the end of his term in May 2023.
A statement of economic interest he was required to file as judge in 2020 showed property ownership in the Fox Creek neighborhood, a vacation home in Florida, two rental properties in Los Angeles and other real estate.
He reported Krilogy Financial Management in St. Louis as manager of mutual funds and municipal bonds. He reported an Allianz annuity and three education trusts. He reported checking and savings accounts at US Bank and PNC Bank, a checking account and a certificate of deposit at Liberty Bank, and a checking account at Town & Country Bank.
Julian and the late Randy Gori led the Edwardsville firm Gori Julian & Associates, which filed 2,480 asbestos lawsuits in Madison County between 2008 and 2017.
That equals about one suit for every day the courthouse was open in that nine-year period. The figure also represents a seventh of all cases in the Madison County major law division, asbestos and otherwise.
Asbestos litigation industry and the growing number of bankruptcies
By volume, Madison County has long been the top asbestos jurisdiction in the nation, which has drawn widespread criticism, most notably from the American Tort Reform Association which labels it a perennial "judicial hellhole."
Reform advocate Mark Behrens of Shook Hardy Bacon in Washington, D.C., whose recent efforts have included addressing the “over-naming” of defendants in asbestos litigation and the lack of transparency in asbestos trust claim filings, says that nearly 140 companies have been forced into bankruptcy due to asbestos liabilities with devastating impacts on the employees, retirees, shareholders, and surrounding communities.
Behrens said that following the earlier bankruptcies of the “big dusties” – companies responsible for the vast majority of exposures - litigation morphed into what one plaintiff lawyer called an “endless search for a solvent bystander."
“More recently, some companies have been forced into bankruptcy in part because of an avalanche of speculative lawsuits that turned out to be meritless as to those companies because many of the plaintiffs could not demonstrate exposure to their products,” he said.
Behrens noted the bankruptcy of Ferro Engineering, maker of refractory products used in steelmaking, which was the first of several companies in 2020 to seek Chapter 11 protection. Ferro’s liability entity ON Marine Services claimed in bankruptcy court at the Western District of Pennsylvania that of the more than 182,000 asbestos personal injury claims filed against it since 1983, 95% were dismissed without payment.
Another business that filed for Chapter 11 in 2020, former manufacturer of asbestos pipe and asphalt roofing, CertainTeed, reported through its liability holding company DBMP that it had been named in the majority of all mesothelioma lawsuits filed in the U.S. in recent years, even though only a “small fraction of those plaintiffs possibly could have been exposed to any asbestos fibers from [Certainteed’s] products.”
DBMP asserted in bankruptcy court at the Western District of North Carolina that more than half of the mesothelioma claims filed against CertainTeed after 2001 were dismissed “usually because the plaintiff could provide no evidence of exposure to (its) asbestos containing product…(the) dismissal rate demonstrates the lack of any good-faith basis for much of the litigation filed against the company.”
In another 2020 Western District of North Carolina Chapter 11 proceeding, two companies with the same parent - Aldrich Pump and Murray Boiler - say that following the bankruptcy of most primary asbestos defendants in the early 2000s, they “routinely would be named in over 2,500 mesothelioma claims every year, equating to a new claim asserted against the [companies] essentially every working hour of every weekday, every week of the year.”
The companies say they were indiscriminately named in the “vast majority of all mesothelioma claims asserted across the country, a percentage that could not plausibly be warranted given the nature” of their operations. Aldrich Pump manufactured pumps and compressors and Murray Boiler, heating and cooling equipment.
In court filings, Aldrich and Murray say they successfully obtained dismissals in about two-thirds of their mesothelioma cases. Yet, the companies were “compelled to expend substantial defense costs to demonstrate the lack of merit of any claim relating to their products––effectively, to prove their innocence before the claimants have plead a valid claim….”
Yet another company to file bankruptcy in 2020 is preparing for trial next year arguing that it has settled thousands of cases in unjust circumstances.
Through rulings in its favor at bankruptcy court in the Western District of North Carolina, Georgia Pacific entity Bestwall holds a tool to measure the difference between fair values of claims and amounts it paid.
Bestwall claims Georgia Pacific settled 60% of cases on a group basis with little or no evidence because each trial would have cost at least $1 million. Bestwall further claims that clients of asbestos firms inflated recoveries by alleging one set of exposures in courts and opposite exposures in private trusts.
Bestwall currently searches for such “double dippers” in exposure and settlement questionnaires that asbestos firms had to submit for each client.
It claims that in 40 years, Georgia Pacific spent almost $3 billion on claims alleging exposure to the joint compound it stopped producing in 1978. It claims asbestos litigation cost the company $184,000 in 2015, $174 million in 2016, and $200 million in the first ten months of 2017.
Bankruptcy Judge Laura Beyer presides over the case and has appointed 10 lawyers to a claimant committee including Beth Gori, wife of Randy Gori. Beyer has set trial for next October.