Judge's Ruling May Decide Firm's Future
Jump to full article: The Washington Post, 2008-01-28
Author: Zachary A. Goldfarb Washington Post Staff Writer; Page D01
Intro: W.R. Grace followed the same tack for a while. But pushed into bankruptcy, it now is trying the novel approach of asking a bankruptcy judge to declare many of the roughly 100,000 claims it faces to be invalid.
The company is making the request as part of its effort to emerge from bankruptcy. In order for Grace to exit bankruptcy, the judge must rule on what liabilities the company faces, and that means deciding how many of the claims are valid and what they might total. The judge's decision does not resolve the individual claims, but it could set a standard for further litigation.
The trial started two weeks ago, and already Judge Judith Fitzgerald has allowed the company to introduce testimony purporting to show that diseases were over-diagnosed in many cases. . . .
"This case and this trial present the first opportunity for a federal court to set a standard on the basis of which the tens of thousands of asbestos claims that are being pursued can be resolved based upon their merit," said David Bernick, a lawyer representing Grace who has a long history defending companies against similar lawsuits. . . .
Asbestos lawsuits have been a prominent battleground for the competing claims of trial lawyers and corporations over the years, a debate that has played out over weight loss pills, tobacco, silicon breast implants and other products.
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