Gori firm accused of fraud, racketeering, ‘bounties’ in asbestos litigation

By Jonathan Bilyk | Legal Newsline
The Center Square

A Los Angeles-based maker of plastic pipes has sued the Gori Law Firm, accusing the most prolific filer of asbestos litigation of a long-running scheme of lawsuit fraud and racketeering.

On Jan. 28, J-M Manufacturing filed suit in federal court in the Southern District of Illinois against the Edwardsville-based Gori firm.

The company asserts its claims are based on information supplied by a “whistleblower” attorney who formerly worked at the Gori firm, who allegedly laid bare a long-running scheme to create a system of “bounties,” deception and other tactics to back up the filing of hundreds of “baseless claims” to ultimately secure billions of dollars in fees from settlements allegedly based on fraud.

“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,” said J-M General Counsel Frank Fletcher in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

“J-M Manufacturing was forced to spend millions defending lawsuits brought on behalf of plaintiffs who never worked with its products—including individuals whose work histories ended before the company even existed.”

The lawsuit against Gori comes as an expansion of J-M’s legal fight to expose what it calls a pattern of fraud and racketeering in what has become the decades-old asbestos litigation industry.

Since 2024, J-M has pressed fraud and racketeering claims against the Alton-based firm of Simmons Hanly Conroy.

Simmons Hanley Conroy is the second most prolific filer of asbestos-related lawsuits in the U.S., trailing only the Gori firm.

According to industry tracking data published by national technology and management consulting company KCIC, in 2024, the Gori firm filed 788 lawsuits in Madison and St. Clair County courts.

Simmons Hanly Conroy came in second with 393 lawsuits filed, KCIC reported.

KCIC has not yet published 2025 filings data.

J-M, however, has asserted that many of those cases have been based on fraud.

J-M specifically has accused the Simmons firm of falsifying or suppressing evidence in asbestos cases and coaching witnesses to allegedly lie under oath about exposure to asbestos from cement pipes J-M produced.

After a Chicago federal judge tossed the initial claims, J-M filed an amended complaint, asserting it could back its new claims with “whistleblower” testimony and evidence.

On Jan. 23, the Simmons firm and other defendants filed another motion to dismiss, asserting J-M’s new claims should suffer the same quick end as their previous complaint, because they assert J-M did not cure the alleged shortcomings from its initial lawsuit.

A judge has not yet ruled on that new motion and the case remains pending.

Meanwhile, however, J-M has now engaged the Gori firm in court, as well.

According to court documents, J-M has been targeted more than 6,000 times in asbestos-related lawsuits, with most of the lawsuits filed in Madison and St. Clair counties, America’s top two destinations for such lawsuits.

However, J-M asserts it was identified as a defendant in those cases solely to drive up the number of defendants to improve the chances of securing settlements from companies that are either unwitting, confused or otherwise unwilling to fight the claims.

They note accusations of fraudulent behavior are nothing new in asbestos litigation, as evidenced by other cases in which plaintiffs’ firms have been caught double-dipping – using litigation delay tactics to improperly collect from both asbestos lawsuits and later claims filed against bankrupt companies – or filing fraudulent claims altogether. These included famous cases that generated headlines in asbestos litigation involving CSX and Garlock Sealing Techs.

In the new complaint, J-M claims a lawyer who formerly worked at the Gori firm has provided evidence that Gori allegedly engaged in similar patterns of fraud, but allegedly took the alleged scheme to new levels.

In the new complaint, J-M accuses the Gori firm of establishing a so-called “bounty” system under which it incentivized the lawyers it used to conduct depositions of clients – so-called “depo attorneys” – to coax and coach clients into agreeing to level false asbestos exposure claims against J-M and other companies, even when the client had never been exposed to products made by those companies.

According to the complaint, the Gori firm had used that bounty system since at least 2018.

Under the alleged system, attorneys “who successfully coached their clients to provide deposition testimony that they were exposed to products belonging to (J-M and certain other companies)” could secure “up to 2% of total settlement proceeds.”

This could allegedly allow an attorney earning as little as $65,000 a year the chance to bring in “up to $800,000 or $900,000” more in earnings per year, the complaint alleges.

According to the complaint, the alleged “bounty list” included J-M and at least 19 other companies, allegedly including 3M, Caterpillar and Honeywell, among others.

According to the complaint, companies allegedly landed on Gori’s “bounty list” because they were seen as “easy targets who were willing to pay substantial settlements” or were companies that had “‘pissed off’ Gori attorneys” in prior proceedings.

According to the complaint, this alleged strategy of tacking on dozens of potential additional defendants – allegedly whether or not they were based on factual claims – allowed Gori to maximize its returns using a so-called “batch settlement” scheme.

“The Gori Firm deliberately filed and used a large volume of … cases it knew were objectively baseless … as ‘bargaining chips’ for batch settlements,” J-M wrote in its complaint. “By bundling these sham cases with cases containing coached testimony, the Gori Firm extracted inflated settlement values while concealing that many of the dismissed cases were filed solely to create negotiating leverage rather than to pursue legitimate claims.”

According to the complaint, the Gori firm has named J-M as a defendant in its asbestos lawsuits at least 400 times.

However, the complaint notes that about 96% of those cases were ultimately dismissed.

In its release, J-M said those dismissals were “an outcome (that) reflects not weak litigation strategy, but a deliberate business model designed to force settlement of objectively frivolous cases.”

In the complaint, J-M asserts it is not the only alleged victim of the alleged Gori scheme. They assert such allegedly fraudulent claims have driven more than 100 companies into bankruptcy and cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars.

J-M said it is seeking to highlight the alleged abusive practices to draw “a distinction between legitimate accountability for asbestos exposure and what it alleges is systemic abuse of the litigation process.”

In response to the lawsuit, the Gori firm issued a statement, saying: “We are outraged by these ridiculous claims from an asbestos company. These scare tactics will not stop us from fighting for justice for our clients who are hurt by manufacturers like J-M Manufacturing Company.”