Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse of Central Texas

Legal News Line
August 17, 2010

CSX Transportation says the dismissal of 1,400 asbestos cases in West Virginia has everything to do with its fraud case against a Pittsburgh law firm.

Peirce Raimond & Coulter had asked that CSX's notice of the dismissals be stricken from the record of the fraud case, which alleges the Peirce firm teamed with a radiologist to fabricate asbestos claims and hid them among several others.

CSX's lawsuit was ruled by a district court to have been filed after the statute of limitations, and the company appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

"(The Peirce firm's) basic submission is that it is impermissible... to apprise a federal court of appeals of a recent development in related state-court litigation," CSX's attorneys wrote Tuesday.

"In fact, it is commonplace."

Attorneys for CSX submitted to the Fourth Circuit a June order from Kanawha County Circuit Court that dismissed 1,400 claims filed by the Peirce firm, which argued they should be dismissed without prejudice. Judge Arthur Recht did not agree, and he dismissed them with prejudice.

Recht had implemented new rules that required plaintiffs to certify they were aware of their lawsuits, that their claim was "well-founded in fact" and that they wished to continue pursuing litigation.

"That order also required the production of 'all materials... relating to Plaintiff's alleged exposure to asbestos,' including 'medical records' and 'materials relating to occupational illness screenings sponsored by the Peirce firm and attended by Plaintiff,'" Dan Himmelfarb of Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., wrote July 30 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

"Rather than making the necessary representations on behalf of the remaining plaintiffs, the Peirce firm moved to voluntarily dismiss the 1,400-plus claims -- except for 62 malignant cancer claims and two non-malignant claims -- and ultimately stipulated that the claims should be dismissed with prejudice."

The Peirce firm says the dismissal of the 1,400 claims has nothing to do with the fraud case against it.

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