A long-secret trove of court filings that bankrupt gasket maker Garlock Sealing Technologies says illustrates a pattern of fraud in asbestos litigation is expected to be opened to public view this week, possibly as soon as today, Forbes.com reported on Friday. The files, Garlock says, will show how plaintiff lawyers withheld evidence their clients were exposed to multiple asbestos products in order to extract higher settlements and court verdicts from Garlock. In one case that generated a $37 million verdict in California, Garlock says, a lawyer with prominent Dallas asbestos firm Waters & Kraus flatly denied exposure to dangerous insulation that his client had already admitted, under penalty of perjury, in another proceeding. The records in racketeering lawsuits Garlock filed against several asbestos law firms are to be unsealed after a fierce battle by plaintiff lawyers to keep them secret. In January, Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges in Charlotte, North Carolina slashed Garlock’s estimated liability for asbestos exposure from $1.4 billion to $125 million after determining that the higher estimates were based upon court cases “infected by the manipulation of exposure evidence by plaintiffs and their lawyers.”
