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August 27, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court denied reargument, leaving in place a ruling holding that discovery rules didn’t permit third parties in asbestos litigation to intervene to block asbestos bankruptcy trusts’ document retention policies allowing the trusts to destroy older claims data that the third parties warned constituted an “unprecedented spoliation of evidence.”
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August 27, 2026
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Talc producer and Chapter 11 debtor Vanderbilt Minerals LLC has filed a plan of liquidation and the plan’s disclosure statement in New York federal bankruptcy court, saying in a motion for approval of the disclosure statement that the document provides “adequate information” under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to allow asbestos claimants and other creditors to vote on whether to accept the plan.
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August 25, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — Repeat litigants seeking to preserve asbestos trust documents told the Delaware Supreme Court that its ruling allowing the destruction to go forward looked at the case too narrowly and threatened “unprecedented spoliation of evidence” and that the court should grant leave to amend to meet the new equitable bill-of-discovery test the court created.
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August 24, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court is set to decide causation and whether to affirm a $9 million verdict for plaintiffs in an asbestos case involving shotgun shell wads after the parties recently wrapped briefing in the defendants’ appeal.
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August 21, 2026
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The evidence shows that asbestos-talc study authors took steps to ensure their study didn’t include individuals in a previous study or those with other, more traditional asbestos exposures, a federal judge in Virginia said in denying Pecos River Talc LLC’s summary judgment motion on its trade libel claim and granting summary judgment to the authors.
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August 20, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and an affiliate told the California judge who oversaw the second bellwether asbestos-talc ovarian cancer trial that the jury heard sufficient evidence about the companies’ testing and marketing efforts to support its findings on negligence and negligence per se claims and that a new trial is not warranted.
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August 19, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — A Virginia federal judge on Aug. 18 confirmed a plan of reorganization for defunct ship subcontractor and Chapter 11 debtor Hopeman Brothers Inc. that establishes an asbestos personal injury trust that will be funded by nearly $50 million from the company’s insurers and by the debtor’s remaining assets.
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August 19, 2026
MISSOULA, Mont. — BNSF Railway Co. asked a federal judge in Montana for summary judgment in a Libby, Mont., asbestos case or for certification of an interlocutory appeal of the liability questions in the case, while in opposing the motion, the plaintiff claims that courts already decided many of the issues surrounding the company’s conduct in the town and that the motion improperly attempts to relitigate those issues.
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August 19, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals should reverse a North Carolina federal bankruptcy court’s denial of relief from the automatic stay in the Chapter 11 case of Georgia-Pacific spinoff Bestwall LLC sought by the executor of the estate of a mesothelioma victim because the debtor’s “Texas Two-Step” bankruptcy was filed in bad faith, the executor says in her opening appellant brief.
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August 18, 2026
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A federal judge in Illinois granted expedited third-party discovery from asbestos trusts in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case in the wake of a Delaware Supreme Court ruling allowing the trusts to implement new document retention policies.
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August 18, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court has distributed for its Sept. 28 conference a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the estates of two mesothelioma victims seeking review of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ reversal of an $8 million combined judgment for the estates against the railroad company that hauled asbestos-tainted vermiculite from W.R. Grace & Co.’s mine in Libby, Mont.
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August 17, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — Former valve maker and current Chapter 11 debtor Valves and Controls US Inc. has asked a Delaware federal bankruptcy judge to give it another month to file an amended plan of liquidation after it had to withdraw its original plan due to a lack of agreement with an asbestos claimants committee on the plan’s proposed asbestos trust.
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August 17, 2026
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A woman opposed transfer of her asbestos action to Connecticut’s complex litigation docket, saying the sua sponteeffort by the court to destroy the consolidated asbestos litigation docket threatens dying plaintiffs’ right to court and the litigation as a whole.
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August 12, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — A federal bankruptcy judge in Virginia has denied an insurer’s motion to modify a 2024 mediation order to allow the insurer to use documents produced by Hopeman Brothers Inc. during mediation in connection with the prosecution of its claim in Hopeman’s Chapter 11 case, finding that the requested relief conflicts with a local bankruptcy rule and that the insurer “failed to provide a compelling legal or factual basis for this Court to impinge upon a confidential judicial mediation.”
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August 11, 2026
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — A New York justice found store-brand talc company Vi-Jon LLC in default after a bench trial and awarded a couple $16,750,487, according to documents filed in the Niagara County Supreme Court. Vi-Jon declared bankruptcy less than a month later.
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August 11, 2026
COLUMBIA, S.C. — In a report to the South Carolina Supreme Court, the justice overseeing asbestos litigation in the state tells the court that a lawyer’s allegations that his clients were not present for mediation “is totally untrue.”
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August 06, 2026
NEW YORK — Stating that an insurance exchange “should not be permitted to escape the economic consequences of its conduct,” a group of intervening reinsurers asked a New York federal court to award approximately $2 million in attorney fees and costs arising from the exchange’s failed attempt to disqualify an attorney who previously represented the exchange from serving as the reinsurers’ party-appointed arbitrator in a reinsurance dispute, contending that the exchange violated a hold-harmless agreement in which it promised not to sue the arbitrator.
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August 06, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — Vi-Jon LLC, which makes private-label bath products such as Epsom salts and body powder, has filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 in a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, seeking to resolve talc-related claims against it through the establishment of a $25 million trust.
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August 05, 2026
NEWARK, N.J. — Just days after Uniroyal Holding Inc. and an affiliate filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing more than 35,000 pending asbestos injury cases, a federal bankruptcy judge in New Jersey on Aug. 4 scheduled a hearing for Sept. 10 to consider the company’s disclosure statement.
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August 04, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — Repeat litigants in asbestos litigation have not identified a sufficiently specific or anticipated claim under which a court can require asbestos bankruptcy trusts to preserve claims data under an equitable bill of discovery, the Delaware Supreme Court said in reversing and remanding for dismissal of the action.
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August 03, 2026
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The Connecticut Appellate Court denied a motion to dismiss an appeal by Johnson & Johnson entities challenging a $25 million asbestos verdict just days after the companies filed an opening brief arguing, among other things, that the trial judge improperly excluded fact-based testimony about Johnson & Johnson’s belief that its talc was safe offered to demonstrate the company’s state of mind and not as scientific fact.
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July 30, 2026
TRENTON, N.J. — Pecos River Talc LLC and two other Johnson & Johnson entities told a federal judge in New Jersey that federal law preempts expert Jacqueline Moline’s anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation counterclaim against them and that their case claiming that she made fraudulent allegations about the use of talc and mesothelioma doesn’t target her speech but her allegedly false allegations.
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July 30, 2026
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The trustee of the Nash Engineering Co. asbestos-related bankruptcy on July 23 opposed a motion to stay a court’s ruling awarding him $57.4 million as a prejudgment remedy, telling a federal judge in Connecticut that the defendants are simply attempting to evade responsibility that is well explained in the decision.
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July 30, 2026
TRENTON, N.J. — In a pair of briefs, the United States and the state of Montana voiced approval of a settlement in the Whittaker, Clark & Daniels Inc. (WCD) asbestos-related bankruptcies in the federal bankruptcy court in New Jersey that would, among other things, convey the Lockwood Solvent Superfund Site to a trust benefiting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Montana, saying the agreement serves the public interest and furthers the goals of federal law governing environmental remediation.
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July 30, 2026
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — An order denying certification of a direct appeal to a circuit court does not short-circuit an attempt to appeal a privilege ruling to a district court and actually reinforces the need for such an appeal, DBMP LLC and related entities tell a federal judge in North Carolina in response to a notice of supplemental authority by the claimants.