Garlock asbestos committee looks to reopen estimation hearing record

By Kali Hays

New York, June 4 - Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC's official committee of asbestos personal injury claimants asked to reopen the record of the company's estimation proceeding that concluded in January, according to a Wednesday motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina.

The committee said it has "discovered through its own outside efforts that Garlock has violated court orders to produce documents to the committee and that Garlock's violations permitted Garlock to present false testimony to the court at the estimation hearing - false testimony the court incorporated into its findings."

As previously reported, judge George Hodges set Garlock's liability for asbestos claims at $125 million in the order on the estimation hearing and ruled that past settlement values exceeding that amount were subject to "misconduct by asbestos claimants or their attorneys."

The asbestos committee claims that Garlock's "novel, highly theoretical and assumption-laden economic 'model'" persuaded the court "to depart from precedent" after it showed "a few plaintiffs' law firms drove up settlement values by suppressing evidence of their clients' exposure to asbestos" by third parties, according to the motion.

According to the committee, some emails between Garlock and one of its key witnesses show that claimants' possible third-party exposure to asbestos was not a part of negotiations during the trial and that the testimony of the witness "holding up a particular settlement as illustrating the impact of supposed withholding of evidence by plaintiffs' counsel was simply false."

"In view of new evidence and to prevent manifest injustice, the court should reopen the record and receive supplemental proofs from the committee," the committee said.

Garlock is a subsidiary of Charlotte, N.C.-based EnPro Industries Inc., which makes sealing products, bearings, compressors and engines. Garlock filed for bankruptcy on June 5, 2010, and its Chapter 11 case number is 10-31607.

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