Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and fellow Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Bestwall LLC v. Official Committee of Asbestos Claimants, supporting hundreds of thousands of victims of the company’s asbestos-linked products, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee press release. To avoid facing the legal claims of victims in court, Georgia-Pacific “moved” to Texas for less than five hours, offloaded its asbestos-related liabilities onto a shell company called Bestwall, put Bestwall into bankruptcy, and then claimed that Bestwall’s bankruptcy protected the entire Georgia-Pacific enterprise from accountability, according to the press release. The bipartisan trio of Senators urge the Court to overturn the Fourth Circuit’s decision to approve the stay of asbestos litigation against Georgia-Pacific, writing, “The bankruptcy system was not designed to provide solvent non-debtors with the option to simply decline to be held liable for alleged wrongdoing, but that is precisely what the Fourth Circuit’s decision countenances. That was not what Congress intended, and it is not a result that this Court should permit.” Read the press release.
Click here to read the full amicus brief.
