Attorneys to get $4.9 million for work in Libby Medical case
<p>Zonolite MineÐ After you cross the new Kootenai River bridge and drive northeast from Libby along the magnificent Kootenai River, you will pass within a few miles of this big indistrial installation which crowns Vermiculite Mountain. This is the Zonolite Co. mine and mill where the raw material for its wide variety of products is scooped from Mother Earth and given the initial processing steps.</p>
Despite written pleas from family members and those suffering the effects of asbestos exposure, attorneys will receive 25 percent of the money earmarked for victims.
In an eight-page decision handed down last week, 19th Judicial District Judge James B. Wheelis ruled a common fund be established to pay attorneys for their work in the case.
About 20 persons of the estimated 2,200 people who will benefit from the Libby Medical Trust Fund of $19.625 million wrote letters to Wheelis urging him not to award money to the attorneys. Three letters favored the attorneys’ compensation.
In the decision, Wheelis’ decision favors McGarvey, Heberling, Sullivan & McGarvey, P.C.; Lewis, Slovak & Kovacich, P.C.,; and Murtha Cullina, LLP, in the amount of 25 percent of the total trust or $4.906 million, together with costs in the amount of $226,193.
Wheelis also mandated that one-fifth ($981,250) of the common fund fee award goes to the resolution of trust beneficiaries Medicare and/or Medicaid reimbursement claims against the trust. Any portion of the $981,250 that is not used must be returned to the trust, Wheelis wrote in his decision.
The attorneys’ request comes after last year’s $19.6 million settlement with W.R. Grace spanning decades of asbestos exposure that has killed about 400 people and sickened more than 2,000. Asbestos dust from the mine once covered Libby, exposing both mine workers and unknowing residents.
One letter writer, Robert Heyne of Libby, said the judgment in favor of the attorneys was too much.
“I’d be in favor of 5 or even 10 percent, but that’s just too much,” Heyne said. “The lawyers really never did anything for us.”
Among those writing in support of the attorneys’ request was Libby resident and longtime victim advocate Gayla Benefield. She praised the attorneys for sticking with the case even after Grace went bankrupt.
“Without them and their support, we would continue to be forgotten and left to our own means,” Benefield told the judge. “Had it not been for the law firm, we would have lost all right to bring W.R. Grace to justice in some form.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)