CHICAGO - J-M Manufacturing of Los Angeles claims fraud allegations that lawyer Scott Peebles of California settled with the Simmons Hanly Conroy firm of Alton carry enough weight to support its racketeering and fraud suit against the firm in Illinois.
J-M counsel Ashwin Ram of Los Angeles opposed a motion to dismiss the suit on Oct. 2 in U.S. district court.
He packed the brief with allegations from a complaint Peebles filed in California in 2020.
In response to the firm’s argument that J-M didn’t allege a specific scheme among individual defendants Ram quoted Peebles on the purposes of each defendant.
J-M sued the firm, lawyers Michael Angelides, Perry Browder, Amy Garrett, Benjamin Goldstein, Crystal Foley and Deborah Rosenthal, and investigator Stan Jones in May.
Ram’s complaint, relying on Peebles’s allegations, sought recovery of amounts J-M paid to contest and settle sham asbestos lawsuits.
In the lawsuit, Ram claims the asbestos lawyer defendants identified any solvent company that might have had a product containing asbestos at any site where clients might have worked.
He alleges the firm constructed a narrative and filed suit in one of a few specific jurisdictions favorable to asbestos plaintiffs.
He also alleges that:
A complaint generally accused more than 20 defendants.
Defendants scripted product identification and exposure testimony.
They downplayed evidence of exposure to products of bankrupt companies.
They concealed information about claims they filed with asbestos bankruptcy trusts or delayed filing those claims until tort litigation was concluded.
They obstructed efforts to obtain evidence that might refute their narrative.
“The firm knows both the cost of defense and the risk of a runaway verdict in its handpicked forum provide it settlement leverage even for the most dubious lawsuits,” Ram wrote.
The firm’s counsel John Storino of Chicago moved to dismiss the complaint in July claiming J-M couldn’t base a fraud claim on routine evidentiary disputes.
He argues that J-M failed to establish elements of racketeering and that a four year statute of limitations ran out because J-M started settling claims with the firm in 2013.
He also claims that an Illinois judge couldn’t hear the case because California law applied.
Ram’s opposition brief argues that asbestos litigators since 2005 turned to solvent companies that sold products with asbestos locked in.
He claims this meant fibers would not become airborne absent extraordinary negligence or willful disregard of warnings.
He wrote that these companies are the least likely to cause asbestos related illness but they still have money, “so they are the ones that get sued.”
He claims J-M sold asbestos cement pipe from 1983 to 1988 as a transition product for water districts that had yet to transition to J-M’s primary product, asbestos free plastic pipe.
He claims the risks of asbestos were well understood and safety measures were pervasive.
He claims locking it in reduced airborne releases to levels well below federal limits in contrast to friable asbestos which is readily crumbled and released.
He claims high exposure occurred only if a pipe was cut with an unventilated power saw.
He claims the pipe bore warnings against using power saws to cut it.
He claims J-M sold pipe to contractors, not the general public.
He claims J-M learned about Peebles’s suit against the firm in or after October 2021.
He claims J-M knew he worked on cases against it.
He claims filings in Peebles’s suit were heavily redacted but a judge unsealed the number of the underlying case and it was against J-M.
He claims the four year limit didn’t run out because J-M discovered its injuries as a result of the Peebles suit.
He claims J-M didn’t learn of Peebles until in or after October 2021.
“Given the enormous volume of defendants’ suits against plaintiff, plaintiff anticipates that discovery will reveal additional injuries that occurred after May 2020,” Ram wrote.
He claims the complaint alleged with particularity that each defendant committed at least two acts of mail or wire fraud.
He claims the racketeering scheme was to extract money through sham lawsuits.
He claims the complaint described fraudulent statements across numerous sham suits.
He claims the firm engaged in wishful thinking when it referred to routine disputes.
He claims the complaint described in painstaking detail how defendants followed an established playbook of fraud in case after case after case.
On California law he wrote, “An Illinois law firm and Illinois lawyers cannot orchestrate a fraudulent scheme from Illinois and then claim to be somehow exempt from Illinois law.
“The sole question is whether the complaint, taken as true, plausibly alleges that defendants engaged in either baseless or fraudulent litigation against plaintiff.
“It plausibly alleges both.”
District Judge Robert Gettleman presides.