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Garlock Sealing Technologies LLC and two other related defendants are opposing motions to keep sealed the names of asbestos plaintiffs and the amounts of settlements they have reached with those plaintiffs.
The judge presiding over the Garlock’s bankruptcy proceedings has set up a process to unseal evidence that led him to make findings of alleged misrepresentation by plaintiffs.
Garlock also wants to unseal questionnaires submitted by claimants in its bankruptcy case and submissions made by claimants to trusts formed out of other companies’ asbestos-related bankruptcies.
“A large portion of the asbestos claimants whose names appear in the estimation record have open claims and are therefore the putative creditors (and parties in interest) in this case,” Garlock said. “The [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit] has held that parties should be allowed to litigate anonymously only in ‘extraordinary circumstances’ justifying a ‘rare dispensation.’”
Claimants’ names are routinely disclosed in asbestos tort litigation and in marketing materials disseminated by the law firms representing them, Garlock said.
In a separate motion , the official committee of asbestos personal injury claimants objected to Garlock’s request to seal some of the bankruptcy filings, including the major expense authorizations that memorialize the reasons Garlock settled mesothelioma cases for the amounts it did and trial evaluation forms completed by Garlock’s outside counsel about cases going to trial.
“Until now, the debtors have been enthusiastic advocates of disclosure, casting themselves as crusaders on the public’s behalf,” the committee said. “Now, without any sense of irony, the debtors maintain that their own documents—critical pieces of the ‘full story’—should remain sealed and shielded from public scrutiny.”
Those documents cannot be shielded by attorney-client or work-product privilege because Garlock had its attorneys testify during the proceeding held to estimate its liability to asbestos plaintiffs about why they settled cases, the committee said.
According to the committee, those “contemporaneous documents” are at odds with why Garlock says it settled its cases.
Last winter, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges of the Western District of North Carolina estimated that Garlock likely owes $125 million to asbestos plaintiffs. He rejected the plaintiffs' argument that Garlock's liability is around $1 billion to $1.3 billion after finding evidence of misrepresentation by plaintiffs' lawyers in several cases that Garlock settled in the past or in which Garlock lost jury verdicts.
According to both sides, the parties agree that there should be redactions of most plaintiffs’ Social Security numbers, birth dates, the identities of minors, account numbers and medical information except that related to asbestos exposure.
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