Asbestos Corporation: counting the claims after the bar date

The bar date for existing asbestos claims against Asbestos Corporation Limited closed at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on September 10, 2026. Most of what came in before it arrived through a secure file-sharing platform that the monitor, Raymond Chabot Inc., set up with Oxaro Inc. so that law firms could send proofs of claim and supporting documents in bulk. The monitor's bulk submission guidelines called for a separate PDF for each proof of claim. Certain firms did not do so, and more than 87,000 files were deposited on the platform; the monitor estimated how many claims they held from its understanding of the naming conventions in the submission folders, and three weeks after the deadline, in its Seventh Report of September 30, it said it had not yet opened all of them, per the Seventh Report of the Monitor, Sept. 30, 2026, paras. 2.4, 2.12.

The estimate, which the monitor calls preliminary, unaudited and liable to be revised upward or downward, is approximately 38,755 proofs of claim: about 36,787 through the platform, about 1,800 on paper by email, fax or mail, and 168 through the online claims portal. The monitor considers the figures "a reliable indication of the order of magnitude of the Proofs of Claim filed in each category of claims," and will report final ones later, per the Seventh Report, paras. 2.4, 2.12–2.13. On July 24 it had reported 320, and discussions with two law firms on the most efficient way to file "thousands of proofs of claim," per the Sixth Report of the Monitor, July 24, 2026, paras. 5.2.1, 5.2.5. The day before the deadline, as reported here on September 10, Justice Jean-François Émond declared Bennett Jones's notices of representation null as to 15 U.S. law firms, which, the monitor notes, are therefore no longer represented by Bennett Jones in the CCAA proceedings; it presents its figures by firm "solely for the purpose of identifying the source of the Proofs of Claim received," without prejudice to questions of the claimants' representation and the firms' status, per the Seventh Report, para. 2.8 and the Judgment of Sept. 9, 2026 (certified translation), para. 46.

Two firms, and the "placeholder" claims

The monitor reports that the vast majority of the proofs of claim were filed for claimants represented by U.S. law firms identified in the notices of representation and substitution Bennett Jones had filed: approximately 33,805, or about 87.2% of all claims received by the bar date. Two of those firms, Bevan & Associates and Grunda Walsh, account by the monitor's count for approximately 33,406, or about 86.2% of the total; its schedule puts them at 20,159 and 13,247, per the Seventh Report, para. 2.5 & Sch. A.

The firms identified in Bennett Jones's notices had given the monitor 108,657 claimant addresses in all, Bevan & Associates 26,533 of them and Grunda Walsh 20,758, according to the schedule. Wallace and Graham, P.A. provided 59,979, and the monitor has so far identified 52 proofs of claim filed by it, all received by email or fax. The monitor warns that these figures "must be interpreted with caution, as the number of addresses provided does not necessarily correspond to the number of potential Claimants, and a portion of the Proofs of Claim received has not yet been allocated to a law firm," per the Seventh Report, para. 2.6 & Sch. A. Its schedule leaves 1,916 paper and portal claims unallocated because it has not yet processed them. For five firms listed in the representation judgment (Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford LLC; Richardson Thomas, LLC; Wyche; Kassel McVey; and Zamler, Shiffman & Karfis), the monitor has identified no proof of claim among those received through the platform, and says they may have filed by mail, email or fax, or through the portal, per the Seventh Report, para. 2.7 & Sch. A, notes 7, 9.

Twelve days after the deadline, at a meeting held by Microsoft Teams videoconference on September 22, representatives of Bevan & Associates and Grunda Walsh told the monitor and its counsel that the proofs of claim they had submitted include a total of more than 12,000 "placeholder" claims. The monitor records the statement in a note to its schedule: "These are essentially claims that the firms completed on behalf of their clients, but for which they were unable to obtain their clients' signatures before September 10, 2026," per the Seventh Report, Sch. A, note 4. The schedule's closing note says that counting a claim as received "does not constitute an acceptance, admission or acknowledgement of its validity, merit or amount," per the Seventh Report, Sch. A, note 11.

Another submission, from Dean Omar Branham Shirley, ran to more than 47,000 documents. Among them, the monitor reports, is a proof of claim filed in the name of the National Service Industries trustee on behalf of approximately 4,200 claimants, which the schedule counts as a single claim. The monitor says it does not contain all of the information requested for all claimants, including the information required under Part J of the form, the section for a claimant seeking reimbursement of amounts it paid to an injured party. "According to Dean Omar Branham Shirley, this deficiency is attributable to the lack of sufficient time to gather the required information," per the Seventh Report, Sch. A, note 5 and the Rectified Asbestos Claims Bar Date Order, Sch. "E", Part J.

After five o'clock

By September 28 the monitor had received 544 proofs of claim after the bar date and 37 requests for leave to file a late claim, none of them in the figures above, per the Seventh Report, para. 2.10. Of the 544, 390, or approximately 72%, were filed by Maune Raichle Hartley French & Mudd, LLC and reached Grant Thornton's New York office, one of the points through which paper claims were forwarded to the monitor, in a four-piece FedEx shipment on September 15. The firm has told the monitor it sent the shipment on September 8 by expedited delivery, with arrival expected by noon on September 10. The FedEx tracking report attached as Schedule B shows, the monitor says, that the shipment information was sent to FedEx on September 8, that the ship date was September 11, and that the shipment left the FedEx origin facility in St. Louis, Missouri, at 10:18 p.m. that day under the FedEx 2Day AM service; it was delivered in New York at 3:32 p.m. on September 15. Because those proofs were physically received after the bar date, the monitor presents them as late claims, "without prejudice to any determination as to their admissibility," per the Seventh Report, para. 2.11, Sch. A, note 3 & Sch. B.

The other 154 late proofs of claim and the 37 requests make up the monitor's late claims register, 191 entries by September 28. Forty-eight arrived on September 10 after 5:00 p.m., 13 on September 11, 98 between September 12 and 18 and 32 between September 19 and 25; none came in from September 26 to 28. No reason for the delay was given in 131 cases. Where one was, the monitor says, it relates mainly to delays in obtaining documentation, technical difficulties with the web portal or with scanning, illness or late awareness of the claims process, reasons "as stated by the senders" that it has not verified or assessed. It anticipates that more may arrive in the coming weeks, per the Seventh Report, para. 3.3 & Sch. A, Tables B.1–B.2.