Specialty Products seeks access to asbestos evidence from Garlock trial

By Kali Hays

New York, April 2 - Specialty Products Holding Corp. and its corporate parent Bondex International Inc. are the latest to request access to certain sealed evidence from Garlock Sealing Technologies LLC's asbestos injury estimation trial that concluded in January, according to a Tuesday filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina.

As previously reported, the court in the Garlock case claimed discovery of widespread misconduct among the asbestos claimants and their legal counsel, but portions of the evidence used to reach this conclusion remain under seal as the result of a preliminary order during the proceedings.

Specialty Products said its pursuit of bankruptcy relief in 2010 was the result of a "dramatic increase in the number of asbestos personal injury lawsuits filed against [it]" and that the settlements reached in the lawsuits to save on defense costs were "in many cases with the same law firms and/or claimants who settled claims against Garlock," according to the filing.

The company went on to claim it is the debtors' "fiduciary duty to their respective estates to investigate claims arising from manipulation of exposure evidence, which this court found pervasive with respect to settlements to which Garlock agreed," and that access to the evidence "will greatly assist SPHC with their investigation."

"It is possible, if not probable, that the SPHC debtors were also subject to the manipulation of exposure evidence and the 'demonstrable misrepresentations' the court found in its estimation opinion," the filing stated.

To date, access to the sealed evidence in the Garlock estimation case has been requested by Aetna, Inc., Rawlings Co., LLC, and Ford Motor Co., with only Aetna being granted access thus far.

Specialty Products is a subsidiary of RPM International, a Medina, Ohio-based producer of specialty chemicals. The subsidiary filed for bankruptcy on May 31, 2010 under Chapter 11 case number 10-11780.

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

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