COLUMBIA, S.C. (Legal Newsline) – South Carolina's foremost plaintiffs firm is jumping into what has become an international fight over whether the state's asbestos judge can hand over control of a foreign company to one lawyer in Richland County.
Judge Jean Toal has yet to respond to a United Kingdom court’s global injunction against the receiver she appointed over a British corporation, as heavyweight plaintiff firm Motley Rice plans to sue the company for exporting asbestos to the U.S. earlier in its corporate history.
Motley Rice's asbestos practice helped build its fortune and reputation, and the massive tobacco settlement of the 1990s that provided billions of dollars to plaintiffs firms bolstered its influence. The University of South Carolina's law school is named after co-founder Joe Rice, who gave $30 million to USC, and the firm's popularity in the state has led to glowing profiles.
"Joe Rice doesn’t walk into a room. He arrives," a USC article says. The Post and Courier in Charleston said he is "one of the best, richest attorneys in the country" and should've been a cowboy while describing his success as a racehorse owner.
The paper also published this year an article with Motley Rice contact information for those seeking "legal advice on an asbestos-related health matter." The firm, according to its site, holds spots on the advisory committees of 17 asbestos trusts – entities that pay out asbestos claimants without the need for costly litigation in courts around the country. It also had an employee appointed to a federal judgeship in Rhode Island by the Obama Administration.
Though it traditionally represents personal injury plaintiffs, Motley Rice, which also has it influence in major mass torts like the opioid epidemic and chemicals known as PFAS, has been retained by an asbestos trust to sue Cape PLC.
That corporate entity is based on the island of Jersey in the United Kingdom and belongs to multinational industrial-services Altrad Group. A recent lawsuit on behalf of more than 100 plaintiffs filed by the most prolific asbestos firm on the South Carolina docket - Dean Omar Branham Shirley - targets those two companies and other allegedly related corporations.
Columbia lawyer Peter Protopapas has caused a stir with his actions as a court-appointed receiver for Cape. As receiver, he is tasked with identifying decades-old insurance policies of now-defunct companies once involved in asbestos litigation to secure money placed in secret funds organized to pay current plaintiffs while himself taking one-third of what he finds.
It's a structure previous Legal Newsline coverage has likened to raising the dead in order to sue insurance companies. Lawyers - some of whom are also legislators - get an extra target for asbestos lawsuits that see multimillion-dollar verdicts on top of already-reached settlements, like this year's $63 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson.
Other gripes by businesses facing suit in Toal's court is that she fattens verdicts when she wants and routinely rules against them in pretrial matters. Appellate judges – appointed by a committee mostly comprised of legislators who are personal injury lawyers and private personal injury lawyers – affirm her decisions.
Protopapas, who is under no obligation to reveal the finances of the funds he created as receiver of more than a dozen companies, has not responded to multiple requests for comment. Some insurers want their settlements with Protopapas kept secret, while at least one is pushing for transparency.
In October, Motley Rice wrote Protopapas, who allegedly slammed a door in the face of someone trying to serve him with a summons to appear in the U.K. Court, to say Motley Rice, on behalf of Pittsburgh Corning's asbestos trust, will be suing Cape, though Legal Newsline has been unable to verify anything has been filed yet. Cape is responsible for selling asbestos to Pittsburgh Corning for use in its products, it is alleged.
Cape convinced a U.K. judge in November that it is unfair for a South Carolina court to assert this kind of control over it.
"(W)hat is apparent from this (Motley Rice) letter is that there are other potential claimants in the U.S. who perceive the Receiver (Protopapas) as authorised to act on behalf of the Claimants, who is holding himself out as having principal authority to act on behalf of the Claimants, whilst at the same time taking actions that are prejudicial to the interests of the Claimants," Cape director Ran Oren wrote in court documents, noting more litigation from the National Service Industries asbestos trust seems coming.
"The Motley Rice Letter demonstrates the kind of damage Mr. Protopapas is capable of inflicting if he is allowed to continue unchecked."
The U.K. High Court of Justice late last month slapped a worldwide injunction against Protopapas. The question now facing Judge Toal, who oversees the asbestos docket in the state, is whether to obey the injunction, which has no legal force in the U.S.
Ignoring it could open Protopapas to legal consequences in the U.K., however, since the judge there found he has violated his duties to protect the interests of Cape. Protopapas has used Cape as a vehicle to sue other companies, including Altrad and mining giant Anglo American, under a theory they acted in concert to hide assets from U.S. asbestos plaintiffs.
Under an agreement with Judge Toal, Protopapas gets to keep a third of anything he collects from third parties as a contingency fee.
The stakes are raised by the entrance of Motley Rice, which ordered Protopapas to retain all documents regarding Cape’s sales of asbestos in preparation for a lawsuit.
“Pittsburgh Corning Trust has paid thousands of victims of asbestos related disease from the use of the product Unibestos, which was an amosite containing product,” Motley Rice said in the letter. “It is our position that an extremely large percentage of the amosite used by Pittsburgh Corning was sourced from Cape, and thus, the foundation of our claim.”
With tight political connections to South Carolina leaders as well as a large economic presence in the state, Motley Rice can offer support for Protopapas and Judge Toal as they fight the U.K. court injunction and efforts by other companies to convince the South Carolina Supreme Court to intervene in Judge Toal’s management of the state’s asbestos docket. Judge Toal was appointed to that post after retiring as the first female chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
In addition to Motley Rice's upcoming lawsuit against Cape, lawyers at the Dallas firm Dean Omar Branham, the leading asbestos firm in Toal's court, filed a new suit on behalf of more than 100 plaintiffs against Cape, De Beers and Anglo American on Nov. 11. The complaint names Protopapas as receiver for Cape and related subsidiaries.
The fight over Cape stems from its corporate lineage extending to Cape Asbestos, a South African mining firm active until the early 1980s, which Altrad bought long after it exited the asbestos business.
Protopapas is using his role as receiver for Cape to sue Anglo American and De Beers under a theory they were part of a cartel that conspired to hid assets from U.S. asbestos plaintiffs. It’s an extension of a strategy Protopapas has used to collect tens of millions of dollars – and millions of dollars in fees for himself -- from insurance companies as receiver for other firms.
Cape argued in the U.K. court that Protopapas is ignoring a landmark U.K. decision denying Cape’s liability to U.S. asbestos plaintiffs, however. Protopapas has never mentioned the so-called Adams decision in filings with Judge Toal, unusual for a lawyer who was assigned to protect Cape’s legal interests.
Saying Protopapas' power has already "been used to the disadvantage of (Cape)," the British court on Nov. 22 issued a global injunction prohibiting Protopapas from “acting or purporting to act on behalf of” Cape.