A federal lawsuit is accusing the Gori Law Firm in Edwardsville of coaching its clients to commit perjury and flooding courts in St. Clair and Madison counties with claims it knew were baseless to leverage settlements from asbestos manufacturers.
J-M Manufacturing Company filed the complaint Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. It cited confidential testimony from an “insider whistleblower” among its evidence.
“This lawsuit seeks accountability for what we allege was an industrial-scale fraud operation: manufactured claims, coached testimony, and the deliberate exploitation of the legal system for profit,” Frank Fletcher, general counsel for J-M Manufacturing, stated in a news release announcing the filing on Thursday.
The Gori Law Firm represented plaintiffs who sued J-M Manufacturing in 434 cases, alleging their illnesses were caused by cement pipe the company sold in the 1980s that contained asbestos. Asbestos can cause serious diseases, often appearing decades after exposure.
J-M Manufacturing highlighted a dozen cases filed in the metro-east and St. Louis it calls baseless, asserting the plaintiffs could not have been exposed to underground asbestos pipe. Some plaintiffs worked in professions such as painting, teaching, pharmacy, and sales. Others had stopped working before J-M Manufacturing began selling the product.
The Gori Law Firm has not yet filed a response in court but issued a statement to the Belleville News-Democrat:
“We...
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