I'm headed to London this weekend to chair an asbestos litigation conference starting On Tuesday the 29th, so this seems a good time for an update on new speakers added to the conference roster and on some UK developments regarding asbestos litigation.
Conference Update: Two additional conference speakers have been added. One speaker will address new research regarding the impact of the chapter 11 asbestos trusts in the United States. Some of the research data was released in the US earlier this month and quite explicitly proves that indeed the chapter 11 bankruptcies have a significant impact on the litigation fortunes of the defendants that remain in the tort system. The research was undertaken by Bates White and will be presented by Peter Kelso. Additional upcoming research on asbestos bankruptcies also will be discussed.
Another speaker was added to address the evolving topic of litigation as a target of investors. Litigation investment will be addressed in two ways. First, Selvyn Seidel of Burford Advisors will explain the nature of the business and how and why it is expanding. Second, additional speaker Andrew Evans will describe the emerging market in which defendant companies may pay other companies to take over some or all litigation risks in, for example, asbestos litigation. Mr. Evans is part of a business known as Litigation Resources Group that has its roots in Bates White work on the economic realities of asbestos litigation.
Conference registration is still open at the online site here. The conference runs all day on Tuesday the 29th and a half-day on Wednesday the 30th. I'm speaking on the 30th as part of a panel on asbestos trusts.
Pleural Plaques: Trade unions in the UK this week started ratcheting back up their efforts to persuade the UK government to enact legislation that would reinstate damages claims for pleural plaques. This September 24 article from the UK asserts that the unions expect "betrayal":
"Unions will again call on the Government to restore compensation for pleural plaques sufferers at the Labour Party Conference next week.
Gordon Brown was presented with a campaign video produced for the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation by Jim Kennedy, political officer of construction union UCATT, this week.
Unions are demanding a new law to overturn the Law Lords’ 2007 decision that sufferers of the asbestos-related disease do not need compensation.
Mr Brown promised the TUC Congress that ministers would examine the question when Parliament returns. But UCATT warned earlier this year that they were expecting “betrayal” on the issue"
Asbestos in Schools Hysteria in the UK: Hard to believe the way asbestos-in-schools history is now repeating itself in the UK via essentially hysterical UK news articles that fail to take any lessons from like prior hysteria in the US. Thus, this article from the UK's Mirror newspaper rather hysterically reports that 50,000 law suits are expected against uninsured UK school councils for allegedly causing asbestos-related disease. The article states:
"Test case may lead to 1000s of asbestos compensation claims
By Mark Ellis 23/09/2009
A test case may open the floodgates to thousands of compensation claims for asbestos-related cancers, a court heard yesterday.
And it could create a massive financial burden on education budgets for generations to come.
The warning comes amid fears that many comprehensive schools built in the 60s are riddled with the potentially lethal material.
It also adds weight to the Mirror's Asbestos Timebomb campaign. Lord Justice Moses at London's civil appeal court heard that 50,000 cases against largely uninsured councils are expected over the next 40 years.
And he set the stage for a landmark ruling by allowing council chiefs at Knowsley, Merseyside, to appeal a £240,000 award.
The case involves Dianne Willmore, 49, who blames her time as a pupil for her incurable lung cancer.
Asbestos timebomb: For more information on the Daily Mirror's campaign visit our blog."
UK reporters actually interested in facts and reality would do well to take lessons from the US experience. Asbestos-in-buildings hysteria swept the United States in the 1980s as EPA and plaintiff's lawyers predicted waves of deaths of janitors and school teachers, and thousands of lawsuits arising from injuries to be attributed to the presence of asbestos in school buildings. Ultimately, the hysteria ended because defendants W. R. Grace, U.S. Gypsum and National Gypsum gathered and analyzed literally tens of thousands of air samples in school buildings. The samples were analyzed and evaluated by world-class experts, including Rich Lee and Morton Corn (Dr. Corn earlier was a highly senior OSHA official and oversaw a dramatic but thoughtful reduction in the PELs for asbestos) . Their peer reviewed articles and testimony ultimately stemmed the tide of hysteria because they proved that in most but not all instances, the indoor air in schools contained no more asbestos fibers than did outdoor air. They also proved that even if fibers are being released in a certain spot in the building, the fiber levels a few feet away are still normal. Morton Corn proved this by, among other things, using air sampling to monitor fiber levels at various points in a room in which he was using a baseball bat to strike an asbestos-containing ceiling material.
Meanwhile, asbestos-in-buildings lawsuits at first flourished in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s but then faded away hen the plaintiff's bar realized that the cases were very hard to win and expensive to litigate. Indeed, my then-partner Pat Lamb and I went to trial for W.R. Grace back in 1995 on asbestos-in-buildings claims brought by the Chicago Board of Education and numerous suburban school districts. After several days of trial, the claims settled for a very modest fraction of the demand.
Today, asbestos-in-buildings claims do not exist in the US except in the non real world of chapter 11 cases where science and state law are routinely ignored. Why? Because Congress' section 524(g) gives economic power to claims that lack merit by giving claimants votes the debtors need to exit chapter 11, thus leading debtors to pay money to settle claims that plaintiff's do not in fact bring or win in state courts. This pattern once again highlights that chapter 11 decision-making for tort claims is seldom grounded in reality.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Quigley/Pfizer Asbestos Bankruptcy Trial Underway and Highlights Deep Flaws in the Chapter 11 Process as It Relates to Mass Tort Claims
This article from Bloomberg describes the start of the confirmation trial in the Pfizer/Quigley asbestos bankruptcy and reviews the case in general. The trial is to run off and on for 7 or more trial days, concluding Oct. 16.
Despite various efforts to paint the situation in other lights, Quigley essentially is a corporate shell doing nothing but running off tort claims, so the relevance/applicability of chapter 11 is not apparent. Indeed, according to Bloomberg, " Edward Weisfelner, a lawyer for asbestos victims, challenged precedents set by asbestos cases in the 1980s. said of this case, “We are allowing the Chapter 11 process to be rented out, for the benefit of the true economic party of interest,” Weisfelner told Bernstein, calling the case a “sham,” by Pfizer that abuses the bankruptcy code. He said the bankruptcy, which has cost $75 million over five years, was filed solely to protect Pfizer. The US Trustee's office also has raised issues on this topic, which is notable because that office has not done much in most of the asbestos-driven chapter 11 cases. In short, one key issue is the extent to which a parent company can pay money and obtain in exchange a bankruptcy court injunction to protect itself against future asbestos claims arising from its relationship to the subsidiary and/or its actions related to the subsidiary. Some procedural issues cloud what the bankruptcy court will and will not do in terms of ruling on those issues.
Also interesting will be the process of estimating the value of future claims. As I've described before here (see item 4) the chapter 11 "estimation" process used in mass tort cases was the subject of scathing criticism in the W. R. Grace asbestos bankruptcy case. The criticism took the form of a declaration by a Nobel prize winning economist, Dr. James Heckman. As he explains it, the estimation process is not even close to scientific and instead is far more about trying to predict the future claiming practices of plaintiff's lawyers based on what the lawyers did in the past. That of course brings to mind the usual investment fund disclosure that past performance is not a predictor of the future, a statement that surely is equally true for the claiming practices of plaintiff's lawyers. According to Professor Heckman, courts should not allow themselves to be used to make a ruling based on estimates built in part around the massive asbestos claiming frauds that Professor Brickman and others have described at length.
The Quigley/Pfizer case also somewhat addresses the reality that in some limited ways, some asbestos plaintiff's lawyers representing some cancer claimants are in some ways contesting the usual approach to asbestos chapter 11 cases because it gives far too much power to the lawyers representing the least sick claimants (if they are sick at all, in the every day sense of the word). This case is thus another part of the occasionally public intramural disputes between different asbestos plaintiff's lawyers, with the two basic camps composed of 1) firms that represent thousands of minimally sick claimants and 2) firms that represent relative handfuls of cancer claimants.
Another public example of those disputes occurred back when some plaintiff's lawyers went to Congress during the days of the so-called FAIR Act and testified about the deep flaws in the thousands of claims being mass-filed on behalf of persons who were at most minimally sick.
Another public indicator of the battle may be found in the chapter 11 trusts which include terms that impose "collars" (limits) on the amount of money that may be paid out in a given year to the least sick claimants.
The intramural battle between camps of plaintiff's lawyer goes on because Congress irrationally handed huge economic power to lawyers for the minimally sick when it enacted section 524(g) of the bankruptcy code. Economic power was created by including a term that requires a vote in favor of the chapter 11 plan by 75% of ALL asbestos claimants. That rule has been under some attack in this case as the lawyers for cancer claimants seek to reduce the value of the votes of the least sick claimants.
The same economic dispute between the cancer claimants and the minimally sick also applies to future personal injury claimants. However, the inherent and obvious conflict between these two subsets of future claimants is typically ignored in chapter 11 cases. How is the conflict ignored? By assigning one person the impossible task of trying to properly represent all future personal injury claimants.
Despite various efforts to paint the situation in other lights, Quigley essentially is a corporate shell doing nothing but running off tort claims, so the relevance/applicability of chapter 11 is not apparent. Indeed, according to Bloomberg, " Edward Weisfelner, a lawyer for asbestos victims, challenged precedents set by asbestos cases in the 1980s. said of this case, “We are allowing the Chapter 11 process to be rented out, for the benefit of the true economic party of interest,” Weisfelner told Bernstein, calling the case a “sham,” by Pfizer that abuses the bankruptcy code. He said the bankruptcy, which has cost $75 million over five years, was filed solely to protect Pfizer. The US Trustee's office also has raised issues on this topic, which is notable because that office has not done much in most of the asbestos-driven chapter 11 cases. In short, one key issue is the extent to which a parent company can pay money and obtain in exchange a bankruptcy court injunction to protect itself against future asbestos claims arising from its relationship to the subsidiary and/or its actions related to the subsidiary. Some procedural issues cloud what the bankruptcy court will and will not do in terms of ruling on those issues.
Also interesting will be the process of estimating the value of future claims. As I've described before here (see item 4) the chapter 11 "estimation" process used in mass tort cases was the subject of scathing criticism in the W. R. Grace asbestos bankruptcy case. The criticism took the form of a declaration by a Nobel prize winning economist, Dr. James Heckman. As he explains it, the estimation process is not even close to scientific and instead is far more about trying to predict the future claiming practices of plaintiff's lawyers based on what the lawyers did in the past. That of course brings to mind the usual investment fund disclosure that past performance is not a predictor of the future, a statement that surely is equally true for the claiming practices of plaintiff's lawyers. According to Professor Heckman, courts should not allow themselves to be used to make a ruling based on estimates built in part around the massive asbestos claiming frauds that Professor Brickman and others have described at length.
The Quigley/Pfizer case also somewhat addresses the reality that in some limited ways, some asbestos plaintiff's lawyers representing some cancer claimants are in some ways contesting the usual approach to asbestos chapter 11 cases because it gives far too much power to the lawyers representing the least sick claimants (if they are sick at all, in the every day sense of the word). This case is thus another part of the occasionally public intramural disputes between different asbestos plaintiff's lawyers, with the two basic camps composed of 1) firms that represent thousands of minimally sick claimants and 2) firms that represent relative handfuls of cancer claimants.
Another public example of those disputes occurred back when some plaintiff's lawyers went to Congress during the days of the so-called FAIR Act and testified about the deep flaws in the thousands of claims being mass-filed on behalf of persons who were at most minimally sick.
Another public indicator of the battle may be found in the chapter 11 trusts which include terms that impose "collars" (limits) on the amount of money that may be paid out in a given year to the least sick claimants.
The intramural battle between camps of plaintiff's lawyer goes on because Congress irrationally handed huge economic power to lawyers for the minimally sick when it enacted section 524(g) of the bankruptcy code. Economic power was created by including a term that requires a vote in favor of the chapter 11 plan by 75% of ALL asbestos claimants. That rule has been under some attack in this case as the lawyers for cancer claimants seek to reduce the value of the votes of the least sick claimants.
The same economic dispute between the cancer claimants and the minimally sick also applies to future personal injury claimants. However, the inherent and obvious conflict between these two subsets of future claimants is typically ignored in chapter 11 cases. How is the conflict ignored? By assigning one person the impossible task of trying to properly represent all future personal injury claimants.
United States to Limit Use of the State Secrets Privilege for Civil Litigation ?
This September 23 NYT article by Charlie Savage describes Obama administration plans to deploy rules that limit the use of the state secrets privilege to block civil litigation. The article also briefly discusses legislative efforts to limit invocation of the privilege.
The existing use of privilege has significantly limited past lawsuits. For an example, see this prior post from this blog regarding civil claims against Saudi entities regarding the September 11 attacks. Make sure to click through to the linked NYT article and its internal links.
Key excerpts follow from the recent article:
Under the new policy, if an agency like the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to block evidence or a lawsuit on state secrets grounds, it would present an evidentiary memorandum describing its reasons to the assistant attorney general for the division handling the lawsuit in question.
If that official recommended approving the request, it would be sent on to a review committee made up of high-level Justice Department officials, and then to Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden and Mr. Holder. All those officials would be charged with deciding whether the disclosure of information would risk “significant harm” to national security, and they would be instructed to seek a way to avoid shutting down the entire lawsuit if possible.
If the Justice Department signed off on asserting the privilege, the head of the agency controlling the information would sign a classified memorandum to be filed with a court explaining in detail the government’s reasoning. A judge could request access to particular pieces of underlying evidence.
The policy is silent on whether the government would comply, and officials said such requests would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. One of the controversies surrounding the privilege is that sometimes judges accept executive assertions about classified evidence without independently examining it.
The existing use of privilege has significantly limited past lawsuits. For an example, see this prior post from this blog regarding civil claims against Saudi entities regarding the September 11 attacks. Make sure to click through to the linked NYT article and its internal links.
Key excerpts follow from the recent article:
Under the new policy, if an agency like the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to block evidence or a lawsuit on state secrets grounds, it would present an evidentiary memorandum describing its reasons to the assistant attorney general for the division handling the lawsuit in question.
If that official recommended approving the request, it would be sent on to a review committee made up of high-level Justice Department officials, and then to Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden and Mr. Holder. All those officials would be charged with deciding whether the disclosure of information would risk “significant harm” to national security, and they would be instructed to seek a way to avoid shutting down the entire lawsuit if possible.
If the Justice Department signed off on asserting the privilege, the head of the agency controlling the information would sign a classified memorandum to be filed with a court explaining in detail the government’s reasoning. A judge could request access to particular pieces of underlying evidence.
The policy is silent on whether the government would comply, and officials said such requests would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. One of the controversies surrounding the privilege is that sometimes judges accept executive assertions about classified evidence without independently examining it.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Will There Soon Be Another Chapter 11 Tort Claim Trust for Chinese Drywall Claims Against an Insolvent Builder, Perhaps With Insurers Involved ?
This summer brought the Chrysler and GM chapter 11 cases in which bankruptcy courts issued wide-ranging injunctions that seek to block some or all tort claimants from pursuing some or all current and/or future tort claims against the insolvent entities and their successors and/or buyers. Now, as we move into fall, here's the latest example of the expanding use of chapter 11 injunctions and trust funds as the proposed means to resolve underlying alleged "mass tort" claims. These ongoing expansions make it even more important to scrutinize the rules to the process by which Wall Street is now able to use chapter 11 to eliminate or transfer financial responsibility for underlying mass tort claims. These ongoing expansions also make plain that there is a pressing need to pull down the veil of secrecy that blocks meaningful scrutiny of the operations of most, if not all, chapter 11 trust funds that resolve tort claims.
This latest example arises from this new motion filed in the Tousa home builder bankruptcy. The effort in Tousa parallels the approach taken in the WCI home builder chapter 11 case. The new motion in Tousa seek to continue the automatic stay to block tort and contract claims regarding buildings built with allegedly defective Chinese drywall. The motion seeks to continue to block the underlying lawsuits based on the prospect of creating a chapter 11 trust to resolve the same underlying lawsuits. Presumably the trust also would be used to resolve the claims that would arise if the court were to allow a proposed class action against Tousa by would-be drywall claimants . The proposed class action is the subject of other bankruptcy court motions.
The motion in Tousa is noteworthy for multiple reasons. For one, it asserts that the debtor will welcome the involvement of its insurers in creating the proposed trust. In contrast, in the asbestos chapter 11 cases, the debtors virtually always assert that trust are "insurance neutral," meaning that whatever happens in the bankruptcy court does not effect the rights of insurers. Based on that claimed neutrality, the debtors and plaintiff's lawyers almost always argue that the tort claim insurers lack "standing" to be involved in the bankruptcy court proceedings.
Insurers sometimes but not always disagree, depending on what view suits a particular insurer's interest in a particular chapter 11 case and its overall financial status. Usually, but not always, insurers that issued primary policies re heavily exposed to the tort claims, and so will seek to cut a deal with the debtor and the plaintiff's bar in order to achieve certainty. Other insurers that issued higher level excess policies tend to fight the debtor on the standing issue until they've created enough of a record that the debtor agrees to accept from the high-level insurer a nominal payment over time in return for a release of all obligations under the higher-level excess insurance policy.
The motion also is noteworthy for what it does not mention. For one, it makes no mention of the current or future rights of other, solvent companies that are now or will in the future end up as co-defendants in the underlying lawsuits. Co-defendant entities can be incredibly harmed by the terms of the bankruptcy trust if the terms cut off or in any way limits the right of co-defendants to bring cross-claims or equitable contribution claims against the debtor or the trust. In the chapter 11 asbestos cases, the trust terms almost always have imposed severe and unconstitutional limits on the rights of the co-defendants to bring cross-claims against the debtor or the trust. To be fair to co-defendants, bankruptcy courts can and should appoint at least one person to represent the interests of fat least future co-defendants.
Additional adverse impacts arise for co-defendants if secrecy is allowed regarding claims submitted to the trust fund and its payouts to particular claimants. Once again, the chapter 11 trust model should not be followed because in most such cases, the plan tosses a veil of secrecy over information regarding which claimants have made claims and what they have been paid. Co-defendants rightly argue that the veil of secrecy is poor public policy because court-ordered trusts should instead be transparent as a matter of public policy. Beyond pure policy issues, the veil of secrecy also is improper because it blocks the co-defendants from asserting state law rights. Secrecy also blocks legislators from understanding what really is or is not being done to compensate legitimate and illegitimate claimants.
The motion also is significant because it does not mention various other sources of conflicts between constituencies with interests in the terms of a trust created to resolve tort system claims. One source of conflicts is that persons with strong and serious claims do not want to see trust fund money frittered away on payments to spurious or marginal claimants. Once again the asbestos chapter 11 cases highlight the problem because most of the trusts have been put in place with terms that have allowed billions of dollars to be paid to claimants who are not "sick" in any meaningful way.
Here are key excerpts from the Tousa motion:
4. Among other things, the Debtors are aware of the recent plan of reorganization confirmed in the chapter 11 cases of WCI Communities, Inc. and certain of its affiliates (collectively, “WCI”) in which WCI successfully managed its liability with respect to Chinese Drywall by implementing a global strategy that will address Chinese Drywall claims through the use of a trust, a channeling injunction and claims liquidation procedures. Additionally, the plan of reorganization permitted WCI to efficiently address its’ claims against its insurance carriers as well as the installers and manufacturers of Chinese Drywall. While the Debtors continue to analyze their own Chinese Drywall cases and their prospects for a chapter 11 plan, the WCI approach offers one possible alternative to piecemeal litigation of Chinese Drywall claims.
5. The Debtors intend to work with their major creditor constituencies in an effort to establish a global strategy with respect to claims arising from or relating to Chinese Drywall. This global strategy will prevent a “race” to insurance proceeds by similarly situated claimants that will have the negative effect of depleting the amount of insurance available to satisfy other claims or, otherwise, impact the Debtors’ ability, as a practical matter, to craft a more comprehensive resolution of the Chinese Drywall-related claims. To that end, the Debtors intend to involve the alleged holders of Chinese Drywall-related claims and the Debtors’ insurance carriers in any such discussions. Based on the Debtors’ desire to develop a global resolution of the Movants and similar claims, the Debtors have filed this objection.
Hat tip to LAW360 for noting the motion to continue the automatic stay.
This latest example arises from this new motion filed in the Tousa home builder bankruptcy. The effort in Tousa parallels the approach taken in the WCI home builder chapter 11 case. The new motion in Tousa seek to continue the automatic stay to block tort and contract claims regarding buildings built with allegedly defective Chinese drywall. The motion seeks to continue to block the underlying lawsuits based on the prospect of creating a chapter 11 trust to resolve the same underlying lawsuits. Presumably the trust also would be used to resolve the claims that would arise if the court were to allow a proposed class action against Tousa by would-be drywall claimants . The proposed class action is the subject of other bankruptcy court motions.
The motion in Tousa is noteworthy for multiple reasons. For one, it asserts that the debtor will welcome the involvement of its insurers in creating the proposed trust. In contrast, in the asbestos chapter 11 cases, the debtors virtually always assert that trust are "insurance neutral," meaning that whatever happens in the bankruptcy court does not effect the rights of insurers. Based on that claimed neutrality, the debtors and plaintiff's lawyers almost always argue that the tort claim insurers lack "standing" to be involved in the bankruptcy court proceedings.
Insurers sometimes but not always disagree, depending on what view suits a particular insurer's interest in a particular chapter 11 case and its overall financial status. Usually, but not always, insurers that issued primary policies re heavily exposed to the tort claims, and so will seek to cut a deal with the debtor and the plaintiff's bar in order to achieve certainty. Other insurers that issued higher level excess policies tend to fight the debtor on the standing issue until they've created enough of a record that the debtor agrees to accept from the high-level insurer a nominal payment over time in return for a release of all obligations under the higher-level excess insurance policy.
The motion also is noteworthy for what it does not mention. For one, it makes no mention of the current or future rights of other, solvent companies that are now or will in the future end up as co-defendants in the underlying lawsuits. Co-defendant entities can be incredibly harmed by the terms of the bankruptcy trust if the terms cut off or in any way limits the right of co-defendants to bring cross-claims or equitable contribution claims against the debtor or the trust. In the chapter 11 asbestos cases, the trust terms almost always have imposed severe and unconstitutional limits on the rights of the co-defendants to bring cross-claims against the debtor or the trust. To be fair to co-defendants, bankruptcy courts can and should appoint at least one person to represent the interests of fat least future co-defendants.
Additional adverse impacts arise for co-defendants if secrecy is allowed regarding claims submitted to the trust fund and its payouts to particular claimants. Once again, the chapter 11 trust model should not be followed because in most such cases, the plan tosses a veil of secrecy over information regarding which claimants have made claims and what they have been paid. Co-defendants rightly argue that the veil of secrecy is poor public policy because court-ordered trusts should instead be transparent as a matter of public policy. Beyond pure policy issues, the veil of secrecy also is improper because it blocks the co-defendants from asserting state law rights. Secrecy also blocks legislators from understanding what really is or is not being done to compensate legitimate and illegitimate claimants.
The motion also is significant because it does not mention various other sources of conflicts between constituencies with interests in the terms of a trust created to resolve tort system claims. One source of conflicts is that persons with strong and serious claims do not want to see trust fund money frittered away on payments to spurious or marginal claimants. Once again the asbestos chapter 11 cases highlight the problem because most of the trusts have been put in place with terms that have allowed billions of dollars to be paid to claimants who are not "sick" in any meaningful way.
Here are key excerpts from the Tousa motion:
4. Among other things, the Debtors are aware of the recent plan of reorganization confirmed in the chapter 11 cases of WCI Communities, Inc. and certain of its affiliates (collectively, “WCI”) in which WCI successfully managed its liability with respect to Chinese Drywall by implementing a global strategy that will address Chinese Drywall claims through the use of a trust, a channeling injunction and claims liquidation procedures. Additionally, the plan of reorganization permitted WCI to efficiently address its’ claims against its insurance carriers as well as the installers and manufacturers of Chinese Drywall. While the Debtors continue to analyze their own Chinese Drywall cases and their prospects for a chapter 11 plan, the WCI approach offers one possible alternative to piecemeal litigation of Chinese Drywall claims.
5. The Debtors intend to work with their major creditor constituencies in an effort to establish a global strategy with respect to claims arising from or relating to Chinese Drywall. This global strategy will prevent a “race” to insurance proceeds by similarly situated claimants that will have the negative effect of depleting the amount of insurance available to satisfy other claims or, otherwise, impact the Debtors’ ability, as a practical matter, to craft a more comprehensive resolution of the Chinese Drywall-related claims. To that end, the Debtors intend to involve the alleged holders of Chinese Drywall-related claims and the Debtors’ insurance carriers in any such discussions. Based on the Debtors’ desire to develop a global resolution of the Movants and similar claims, the Debtors have filed this objection.
Hat tip to LAW360 for noting the motion to continue the automatic stay.
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