Garlock reaches $480 Million settlement on asbestos claims

Garlock plans to emerge from bankruptcy and establish a trust in the amount of $480 Million to pay asbestos claimants and their families. Garlock a member of the EnPro Industries consortium had made asbestos gaskets.Asbestos is a known carcinogen and causally connected with lung cancer, mesothelioma and other malignancies as well as asbestosis.

Witnesses present divergent settlement figures in Garlock estimation trial

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Heckman

Attorneys representing claimants suing Garlock Sealing Technologies for asbestos exposure presented a second consultant who estimated the company would need to devote $1,293 billion to a trust to settle pending and future claims against the company, a figure a Nobel prize winning economist testified was unreliable because of what he said was questionable methodology Friday.

Francine Rabinovitz, president of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Associates, said she relied on the past five years of asbestos litigation data to come up with the figure. A Garlock consultant previously testified the company would need to devote a significantly less amount – $270 million. Rabinovitz said she arrived at her figure by estimating the size of the population exposed to asbestos, the proportions of persons exposed to asbestos who develop mesothelioma, and the cost of defending asbestos claims among other factors.

Rabinovitz’s figure comes close to the estimate of Mark Peterson, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in social psychology who does estimations for trusts and was also called to offer his estimation in court by claimant attorneys. Peterson came up with a figure of $1.365 billion to cover liability Garlock would likely face from people who have pending claims against the company and future claimants who will develop cases of mesothelioma in the coming years.

Garlock testimony switches to financial liability

Asbestos companies have for decades attempted to limit their personal injury claims liability by filing for bankruptcy protection. The Union Asbestos and Rubber Company and Johns Manville were the first in a series of companies who have sough protection. Adequately funding an asbestos personal injury claims trust is essential to protect injured workers and other victims of asbestos disease, ie. asbestosis, lung cancer & mesothelioma. As long as asbestos is not banned in the US, it is critical that these trust adequately compensate the victims and potential victims for decades into the future. 

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Bates

Attorneys transitioned Friday from days of expert testimony on the carcinogenic effects of asbestos and the work practices of attorneys representing asbestos plaintiffs to arguments about how much financial liability Garlock Sealing Technologies should face in the company’s ongoing bankruptcy trial.

Garlock attorneys called on economists to give the court estimates for how much money the company should place in a trust for future mesothelioma victims who might sue the company over exposure to asbestos from their products. Doing so will allow the company to escape bankruptcy.

Asbestos Bankruptcy: Judge denies motion to keep Garlock trial open

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Legal Newsline’s efforts to keep a North Carolina bankruptcy trial open to the public have failed.

Attorneys for Legal Newsline filed a motion Tuesday to keep the entire trial open to the public.

On Wednesday, Hodges denied Legal Newsline’s motion, saying none of the seven orders previously entered in the case relating to confidentiality of documents had been challenged by Legal Newsline or anyone else. Nor did Legal Newsline appear with respect to a motion by Garlock, which Hodges denied, to remove the confidentiality designation from certain documents.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George R. Hodges had closed the courtroom to the news media and the public during a portion of a law professor’s testimony last week in the asbestos bankruptcy case filed by Garlock Sealing Technologies.