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Asbestos Case Tracker

Real-Time Court Decisions and Other Developments in Asbestos Litigation.

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• Asbestos Case Tracker, Illinois, Motion to Dismiss

RICO at the Courthouse Door: Surviving Noerr-Pennington and Pleading Fraudulent Mass-Tort Litigation

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Court: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division)

In this asbestos action, a federal judge largely allowed J-M Manufacturing Company Inc.’s civil RICO claims to proceed against plaintiff’s firms Simmons Hanly Conroy LLP, Sokolove Law LLC, and several individual attorneys and staff members.

J-M alleges the defendants operated a “Fraud Playbook” involving fabricated exposure narratives, coached testimony, suppression of bankruptcy-trust evidence, false discovery responses, and strategically filed asbestos lawsuits designed to extract settlements. The allegations of misconduct spanned a number of lawsuits, which led the court to determine that J-M pleaded a distinct RICO enterprise in its amended complaint. The court dismissed J-M’s original complaint because it failed to plausibly plead an enterprise distinct from the RICO person defendants.

Defendants sought dismissal of J-M’s claims based upon Noerr-Pennington immunity, a doctrine that provides immunity from liability to those who petition the government. The court concluded dismissal was premature because J-M plausibly alleged two exceptions to the doctrine including the filing of baseless lawsuits, and intentional and material fraudulent misrepresentations. The court also rejected defendants’ statute of limitations defenses.

While the court applied California law to the state-law claims, it declined to apply California’s anti-SLAPP statute in federal court, siding with the 2nd Circuit’s analysis in La Liberte v. Reid that California’s anti-SLAPP procedures conflict with federal rules 12 and 56. The separate anti-SLAPP motion was denied as a result.

The court simultaneously held that allegations sufficient to support RICO claims do not necessarily support state-law tort claims. California’s litigation privilege remained broad enough to bar fraud, conspiracy, and unjust-enrichment theories premised on the same litigation communications. Thus, federal RICO claims survived while traditional state tort theories did not. The court also directed parties to file a joint status report on or before December 14.

Read the full decision here. 

(Case: J-M Manufacturing Company, Inc. v. Simmons Hanly Conroy, LLP, et al. Case No. 24-C-3853)