G-I Holdings Sues Personal Injury Lawyers

G-I Holdings, formerly GAF Corp., sued a group of prominent personal injury lawyers for racketeering, alleging they schemed to flood U.S. courts with hundreds of thousands of asbestos cases regardless of the legitimacy of the claims. The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, names such well-known lawyers as Ronald Motley and Joseph Rice of the Charleston, S.C., firm of Ness, Motley, Loadholt, Richardson & Poole, which has been involved in asbestos litigation for many years and also played a high-profile role in tobacco litigation. The suit “is full of false allegations and we’ll defend it fully,” Rice said. Other defendants include Russell Budd and Frederick Baron of the Dallas firm of Baron & Budd and Robert Gordon and Perry Weitz of the New York firm of Weitz & Luxenberg. GAF, based in Wayne, N.J., filed for bankruptcy protection last week to deal with liability claims stemming from its now-defunct asbestos business. It said it had paid out more than $1.5 billion to settle some 500,000 personal injury claims since the 1970s.