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Bestwall LLC, an affiliate of Georgia-Pacific LLC, has sought bankruptcy protection after years of asbestos-related costs have piled up, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bestwall, which once made building products that contained asbestos, sought chapter 11 protection today in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Charlotte, N.C. The bankruptcy filing comes as Bestwall looks to survive an onslaught of claims for asbestos damage that date back to the 1970s. While the asbestos litigation dates back nearly 40 years, Bestwall has decided to seek bankruptcy protection as litigation-costs have exponentially increased since 2000, according to data provided by Bestwall representatives. Between 1979 and 1999, the litigation costs averaged about $6 million per year. However, by 2000 the costs began to spike, and since then have cost the company about $2.8 billion.

The legal fallout from a bridge that has been reconstructed continued this month as the owners of the company that developed Crossings Mall in Elkview, W. Va., was sued by a lending company in federal court, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. The U.S. Bank National Association claims William A. Abruzzino and Rebecca A. Abruzzino, owners of Tara Retail Group, LLC, owe them more than $17.2 million for defaulting on a 2013 loan, according to the complaint in the lawsuit filed Oct. 23 in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The loan originally was for $13.65 million, and the association claims Tara Retail breached its guaranty agreement because Tara Retail hasn’t made payments on the loan since July 2016, a month after the June 2016 flood that washed away the bridge, the only public access to Crossings Mall. The association also claims the Georgia-based Tara Retail breached the guaranty agreement by allowing a merchant’s lien against the property in November 2016 without consulting the association. In addition to the $17.2 million associated with the loan, the association is seeking attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses for this lawsuit as well as four other lawsuits in which the association has been involved as a result of Tara Retail’s loan default in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of West Virginia, according to the complaint.

Chicago landlord Arthur Holmer is losing five properties — including two in Lakeview that nearly landed him in federal prison — after a bitter battle in bankruptcy court, Crain’s Chicago Business reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Deborah Thorne signed an order this week confirming the $41 million sale of the properties, which include two vintage River North buildings, according to court filings. Holmer has been wrangling with his creditors over the properties for more than a year, most recently pushing a plan to refinance them and retain his ownership. But Judge Thorne instead signed off on the sale to a venture led by local investor Maria Magnus. The order ends a drama that began with a federal criminal investigation of Holmer and included a guilty plea by the landlord for bank fraud, followed by several lawsuits filed by Holmer's lenders and financial partners.

A trust set up to handle asbestos litigation against Pittsburgh Corning Corp. has reached a $178 million settlement with a group of 2,000 claimants who have been seeking relief since the 1990s, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported yesterday. In a deal disclosed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh, the $4 billion trust agreed to pay initially $38 million to the group, called the Cimino claims, which filed its cases against Pittsburgh Corning in Texas in the 1990s. They will receive another $140 million if an arbitration panel decides in their favor. The trust had resisted paying the claims saying some of them never went to trial or their verdicts were overturned. The trust was created to handle claims when Pittsburgh Corning emerged from bankruptcy in 2016. Thousands of people filed claims saying the company’s insulation products caused illnesses. The trust is funded by PPG and Corning Inc. which were original joint venture partners in the company. Earlier this year, Plum-based Pittsburgh Corning was acquired by Owens Corning of Toledo, Ohio.

A judge has ruled Peabody Energy Corp. is protected by its recent bankruptcy from global-warming lawsuits brought by California coastal communities against fossil-fuel companies, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Judge Barry Schermer of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri ruled on Tuesday that discharge and injunction provisions included in Peabody’s chapter 11 plan of reorganization extinguish the lawsuits that were filed months after the coal-mining company left bankruptcy in early April. The litigation was brought by the counties of San Mateo and Marin and the city of Imperial Beach and seeks damages tied to greenhouse-gas emissions between 1965 and 2015. Peabody sought bankruptcy in 2016. The ruling doesn’t affect other companies that are named in the lawsuits, filed in July. The lawsuits say that Peabody for decades has exported substantial amounts of coal from California and claim the company has been linked to groups that have sought to undermine climate science and the connection between emissions and global warming and rising sea levels. Peabody has said the lawsuits lack merit. Judge Schermer said that the California communities were required to bring claims against Peabody during the bankruptcy but, instead, chose not to participate in the chapter 11. Initiating the lawsuits after Peabody left chapter 11 was intended to give these communities an advantage over other company creditors who went through the bankruptcy process, the judge said.

A lawyer for a global group of investors in offshore drilling company Seadrill Ltd vowed yesterday to fight for fair treatment for bondholders unhappy with the company’s proposed debt-cutting plan, Reuters reported. Norway’s Seadrill filed for chapter 11 protection in Texas on Sept. 12, with a plan backed by nearly all lenders as well as holders of 40 percent of its bonds. The plan was backed by major shareholder John Fredriksen, the Norwegian-born shipping billionaire. It will extend by around five years maturities on billions of dollars in loans, intended to give the company breathing space until an industry recovery gains steam. Under the plan, holders of the company’s $2.3 billion in unsecured bonds would receive 14.3 percent of the stock in the reorganized company. That plan was “wholly unacceptable” to a group holding around 25 percent of Seadrill’s bonds, a lawyer for the group told a bankruptcy judge at a recent hearing. The group includes 38 investors from the United States, Europe and Asia, and funds managed by Nordic asset manager DnB Asset Management, Nine Masts Capital Ltd of Hong Kong, and U.S. hedge funds such as Phoenix Investment Adviser LLC.