CHARLOTTE - Asbestos lawyers coordinated destruction of documents in bankruptcy trusts to evade rulings of bankruptcy judge Laura Beyer, according to a letter Beyer posted on the docket of Georgia Pacific entity Bestwall.
Michael Mandelbrot of California sent the letter to Beyer on March 25 claiming asbestos lawyers conspired to “forever conceal thousands of fraudulent claims.”
He identified himself as a 30 year plaintiff’s asbestos lawyer who has fought criminal conduct at trusts for more than 10 years.
He attached notices he received in January from Delaware Claims Processing Facility, a manager of many trust funds.
The notices stated the trusts might begin destruction on April 15.
“Deleting and destroying documents related to a Chapter 11 investigation is felony," he wrote.
Among the conspirators he named Steven Kazan of California, John Simmons of Alton, the Maune Raichle firm of St. Louis, and processing facility counsel Marla Eskin.
He claimed lawyers misappropriated $5 to $10 billion from trusts.
He claimed every future claimant will receive 80% less than they would have received eight years ago because of the misappropriation.
“Every single asbestos disease victim from now until the end of time loses because of this coordinated criminal fraud," he wrote.
He claimed trust fiduciaries had a duty to ensure equal treatment of all victims.
“In all asbestos trusts these fiduciary duties have been breached as the lawyers have utilized the trust funds as their personal piggy bank," he wrote.
Georgia Pacific split into an operating company by the name of New GP and a debt resolution company by the name of Bestwall in 2017.
Bestwall petitioned for reorganization and asked for a hearing to estimate its liabilities.
A committee of plaintiffs lawyers opposed a hearing, claiming Bestwall could rely on past settlements in court cases to predict future settlements.
Bestwall responded that plaintiffs inflated settlements in courts by concealing amounts they received from trusts.
Bestwall claimed plaintiffs alleged one set of exposures in trust claims and a different set of exposures in court claims.
Beyer granted estimation and Bestwall compared a random sample of exposure claims from trusts to exposure claims from courts.
In 2023, Bestwall selected 79 individual cases as evidence of fraud and it aggregated 142 cases for group analysis.
The plaintiff committee moved to exclude all those cases last October and called them "salacious."
Beyer denied the motion in January.