Judge's ruling favors lawyers
Despite written pleas from family members and those suffering the effects of asbestos exposure, attorneys representing victims will receive 25 percent of the money earmarked for those suffering from asbestos disease.
In a decision handed down last week, 19th Judicial District Judge James B. Wheelis ruled a common fund be established to pay attorneys for their work in the case.
About 20 of the estimated 2,200 people who will benefit from the $19.6 million Libby Medical Trust Fund wrote letters to Wheelis, urging him not to award money to the attorneys. Three letters favored the attorney compensation.
Wheelis ruled the Kalispell law firm of McGarvey, Heberling, Sullivan & McGarvey; the Great Falls law firm of Lewis, Slovak, Kovacich & Marr; and Murtha Cullina, LLP, which has several law offices on the East Coast, together will receive of 25 percent of the trust, or $4.9 million, together with costs in the amount of $226,193.
Wheelis also ruled that one-fifth, or $981,250, of the common fund fee award will go to the resolution of trust beneficiaries’ Medicare and/or Medicaid reimbursement claims against the trust. Any portion of the $981,250 that is not used must be returned to the trust, Wheelis wrote in his decision.
The attorneys’ request to be paid comes after last year’s $19.6 million settlement with W.R. Grace spanning decades of asbestos exposure linked to the company’s vermiculite mine that has killed about 400 people and sickened thousands. Both mine workers and unknowing residents were exposed to the toxic asbestos dust.
A separate legal settlement last year between asbestos victims and the state of Montana to cover damages for failing to intervene sooner in Libby included $14 million in attorney fees.
Angela Young, a Libby resident who said she’s tethered to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day to help ease her asbestos-related lung problems, told Wheelis that the plaintiffs’ lawyers have gotten enough money for their work.
“Yes, the lawyers should be and have been compensated,” Young wrote. But “the lawyers are not the ones who are afflicted. There are many suffering victims that can use the money more effectively in their daily struggles to live a semi-normal life.”
Among those writing in support of the attorneys’ request was Libby resident and longtime victim advocate Gayla Benefield. She praised the attorneys for sticking with the case even after Grace went bankrupt.
“Without them and their support, we would continue to be forgotten and left to our own means,” Benefield told the judge. “Had it not been for the law firm, we would have lost all right to bring W.R. Grace to justice in some form.”
The Grace settlement resulted from the company’s bankruptcy case, during which victims’ attorneys from three firms worked more than 18,000 hours over 11 years, according to an affidavit submitted to the court by Jon Heberling, one of the lead attorneys in the litigation.