-
March 18, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — Railways carrying material under federal law are common carriers and can’t be held strictly liable, and federal law preempts state laws attempting to do so, BNSF Railway Co. tells a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in a March 17 brief, hoping to erase an $8 million asbestos verdict stemming from its handling of asbestos-tainted vermiculite at the Libby, Mont., mine.
-
March 18, 2025
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A bankrupt company tells a federal judge in South Carolina that a February ruling supports limiting precedent on federal jurisdiction to bankruptcy cases and instances where a removing entity was an actual party to the case, while urging the court to reject insurers’ attempts to remove an asbestos action against a receiver for Canadian-based Asbestos Corp. Ltd. (ACL).
-
March 17, 2025
WILMINGTON, Del. — The U.S. divisions of cosmetics giant Avon seek approval from a Delaware federal bankruptcy judge of the disclosure statement for their Chapter 11 liquidation plan, saying they are optimistic that negotiations with asbestos talc claimants will produce an agreement on how money for allowed talc claims will be distributed from a bankruptcy trust under the plan.
-
March 18, 2025
FORT WORTH, Texas — The Second District Texas Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court’s ruling that an insurer has a continued duty to defend its insured against underlying asbestos bodily injury lawsuits because the trial court properly found that the underlying allegations fall within the policies’ premises-operations coverage and the insurer failed to show that its policies have been exhausted.
-
March 17, 2025
NEW YORK — A mesothelioma sufferer cannot be required to continue litigating a five-year-old asbestos case against the lone remaining defendant in his case so that the company can depose an expert and avoid litigation costs in other cases against it, a federal judge in New York said in adopting a magistrate judge’s ruling and granting the plaintiff’s motion to dismiss the case with prejudice.
-
March 11, 2025
HELENA, Mont. — Legislation in the Montana Senate seeking creation of a three-judge government claims court that would have jurisdiction over constitutional and asbestos-related claims was passed on a second read after moving out of the Judiciary Committee.
-
March 10, 2025
By Scott M. Seaman
-
March 10, 2025
JACKSON, Miss. — A federal judge in Mississippi said the advantages inherent in avoiding overlapping discovery and different rulings in different courts warranted transferring one law firm’s suit targeting a second law firm over asbestos-talc negotiations with Johnson & Johnson.
-
March 10, 2025
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary opposed reconsideration of a ruling allowing a single claim to proceed against three experts it accuses in a lawsuit of disparagement and false advertising based on their article linking mesothelioma to exposure to talc, while the parties asked a federal judge in Virginia to permit bifurcated discovery, with the first phase involving fact questions and the second involving damages, which the subsidiary also opposed.
-
March 05, 2025
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary and three experts it accuses of disparagement and false advertising based on an article they published linking mesothelioma to exposure to talc asked a federal judge in Virginia to bifurcate discovery, with the first phase involving fact questions and the second involving damages.
-
March 05, 2025
HOUSTON — An appeal by certain asbestos talc claimants’ counsel of a Texas federal bankruptcy judge’s denial of their motion to transfer venue for the Chapter 11 case of the latest Johnson & Johnson (J&J) spinoff, Red River Talc LLC, should be dismissed because the counsel have not satisfied any of the grounds for leave to appeal, the debtor says in a reply brief in support of its motion to dismiss the appeal.
-
March 04, 2025
By Scott M. Seaman
-
March 04, 2025
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A Los Angeles jury found that an automaker’s brake products failed to perform as an ordinary customer would expect and that it failed to adequately warn about the dangers but that the conduct was not a substantial factor in a man’s development of mesothelioma.
-
February 25, 2025
TRENTON, N.J. — A New Jersey federal bankruptcy judge gave raw materials supplier and Chapter 11 debtor Presperse Corp. six more months to have the exclusive right to file an amended plan of reorganization after the company’s lone insurer objected to the plan’s disclosure statement and disputed insurance coverage for asbestos personal injury claims.
-
February 25, 2025
LOS ANGELES — Parties and amicus curiae recently wrapped briefing in a California appeal turning on expert testimony, including expert William Longo’s identification of asbestos in talc products and whether the causation evidence supported a verdict of more than $32.8 million in total compensatory damages and another $10.3 million in punitive damages.
-
February 24, 2025
NEW YORK — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a mandate and order granting asbestos talc claimants’ petition for a direct appeal of a New York federal bankruptcy judge’s decision barring the claimants from pursuing claims against former debtor Revlon Inc. under the discharge and injunction provisions of its confirmed Chapter 11 plan of reorganization.
-
February 21, 2025
OMAHA, Neb. — A Nebraska federal magistrate judge granted a motion filed by National Indemnity Co. (NICO) to restrict access to documents containing expert reports in its suit seeking to enforce obligations by defendants it calls reinsurers — one of which is now insolvent — for liability NICO incurred related to claims for asbestos exposure.
-
February 21, 2025
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Individuals wishing to pursue asbestos tort claims in Ohio will have 60 days from the filing of a suit to provide a sworn statement detailing the grounds for each claim and defendant under legislation recently enacted in the state.
-
February 21, 2025
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Three asbestos experts asked a federal judge to reconsider his conclusion that a paper they published on asbestos-talc causation was about Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder product after the judge dismissed two of the three claims saying timeliness and evidence issues doomed two of the three claims and left only the claim alleging product disparagement.
-
February 20, 2025
WILMINGTON, Del. — With a $505 million global settlement in place and an “overwhelming” majority of asbestos talc claimants voting to accept a plan of reorganization, talc supplier and Chapter 11 debtor Cyprus Mines Corp. says in a motion and brief in Delaware federal bankruptcy court that an injunction barring claims against its immediate parent should be extended for six months while it conducts discovery in preparation for the plan’s confirmation hearing.
-
February 19, 2025
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Companies created in the wake of Johnson & Johnson’s attempts to get out from under asbestos-talc litigation tell a Connecticut judge in a Feb. 18 reply that they didn’t inherit any of those liabilities and cannot be held liable under applicable Texas law.
-
February 19, 2025
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Timeliness and evidence issues doom two of the three claims a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary brings against a trio of asbestos experts who authored a report linking talc to mesothelioma, leaving only a product disparagement claim based on the conclusion that a published study targeted the company’s talcum powder without naming it and that the attention the study received likely caused lower sales and higher litigation costs, a federal judge in Virginia said in partially dismissing the action.
-
February 14, 2025
NEW YORK — As asbestos disease plaintiff said Feb. 13 that a magistrate judge properly recommended denying attorney fees and costs to a defendant company that he hopes to dismiss with prejudice because the company lumped both together in its request and failed to support either.
-
February 14, 2025
RICHMOND, Va. —The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals should affirm a bankruptcy court’s decision not to lift the automatic stay so asbestos claimants could proceed with their state court lawsuits against CertainTeed spinoff DBMP LLC because “the Bankruptcy Court did not abuse its discretion” in rejecting the claimants’ argument that DBMP’s Chapter 11 case was filed in bad faith, the debtor says in a response brief.
-
February 10, 2025
CHARLOTTE, N.C. —A North Carolina federal judge has agreed to stay an appeal by an asbestos personal injury claimant of a bankruptcy court’s decision not to lift the automatic stay in the Chapter 11 case of Ingersoll-Rand and Trane spinoffs Aldrich Pump LLC and Murray Boiler LLC until a similar appeal is decided by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.