August 3, 2026
As a young man in the 1960s, Tommy Lineberger spent summers on construction sites, doing everything from driving a bulldozer to spackling and mudding walls in the North Carolina sun.
Decades later, those early experiences would come back to haunt the Newton resident. Lineberger was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure, in 2016. He died less than two years later.
Lineberger is one of thousands whose claims against the companies that produced asbestos-laden products have sat in limbo for nearly nine years as the bankruptcy case of a Georgia-Pacific affiliate stalls in a Charlotte court.
Georgia-Pacific, the Koch-owned conglomerate known for household products like Quilted Northern toilet paper, Brawny paper towels and Dixie cups, transferred its liabilities to subsidiary Bestwall during a corporate restructuring; Bestwall filed for bankruptcy in 2017. That has prevented cancer victims and their families from pursuing lawsuits against the company, or receiving any compensation.
Like Lineberger, many at the center of the tens of thousands of pending claims against the company have died waiting for relief. The Observer first reported on the case in 2024.
Now, Bestwall could dismiss the case and file a new Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to court filings. Families and their attorneys say it would continue to prevent victims from having their day in court.
“This company isn’t bankrupt and they’re abusing the system,” said Clay Thompson, an attorney representing cancer victims in the case.
Bestwall’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
Lineberger’s two sons, Todd and Tim, remember him as a doting father, always present at Friday night football or midweek basketball games.
He was also a workhorse. Even after he transitioned to truck driving, he would often volunteer to help family and friends with DIY carpentry projects like home remodels or installing flooring.
“There wasn’t much as far as a handyman he couldn’t do,” Tim said.
In the summer of 2016, Lineberger developed a cough that he couldn’t shake. Normally the last to take a break, Todd remembers his father struggling to maintain his usual pace during a deck build Lineberger helped him with.
“He kept saying ‘I just don’t feel good,’” Todd said.
It would be the men’s last project together. Lineberger was diagnosed with mesothelioma shortly after. Following treatment at Duke University Medical Center and the loss of a lung, the husband and father passed away in 2018. He was 75.
Lineberger is one of about 2,500 people who die in the U.S. every year, and 30,000 who die globally, from the rare cancer. Exposure to asbestos — once present in a range of consumer products, from joint compound to baby powder to automotive parts — causes most cases. The products didn’t contain warnings that using them could expose a person to dangerous asbestos.
The 5-year survival rate for the most common kind of mesothelioma, which affects the lungs, is just 7% to 24%. Most patients die within two years of diagnosis.
Mesothelioma takes 20 to 60 years to develop after exposure. Exposure risk peaked in the 1970s, with lawsuits beginning to accelerate between the late 1980s and 2000s.
By 2005, Georgia-Pacific was facing nearly $1 billion in liability from asbestos exposure lawsuits. But the company remained profitable. Today, online estimates of Georgia-Pacific’s worth hover around $20 billion, and its parent company Koch Industries is worth more than $125 billion.
Just over a decade later, the company created Bestwall LLC and, after moving headquarters to Texas for less than a day, used the state’s divisional merger strategy to transfer its liabilities to the subsidiary. Bestwall filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in North Carolina three months later.
It’s a controversial legal tactic known as the Texas Two Step that has been tried by other major corporations facing mass lawsuits, but many of those efforts have been struck down by courts across the country. In Charlotte’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court, though, the cases haven’t been dismissed. Judges have cited Fourth Circuit legal precedent, requiring a finding of “objective futility” — meaning there is no possibility of a settlement — before dismissal.
That’s something victims’ attorneys have said is a misinterpretation of precedent that mass tort defendants like Georgia-Pacific have used to their advantage.
“North Carolina is the only place in the world where a company can park their liabilities … and trample on the rights of victims,” plaintiff’s attorney Thompson said.
Other profitable companies like Trane have executed a similar tactic and have subsidiaries with bankruptcy cases pending in the same court, records show.
Attorneys representing Bestwall have said in court filings that bankruptcy is the most fair and efficient way to resolve claims. But cancer victims, in their latest petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the Two Step, argue that the bankruptcy maneuver allows wealthy conglomerate Georgia-Pacific to avoid accountability without offering a true path to resolve claims.
Higher courts have declined to weigh in on whether the Texas Two Step is an abuse of the bankruptcy system, as the plaintiff’s attorneys have alleged.
The U.S. Supreme Court has twice denied petitions to hear the case — in 2024 and this spring — despite support from attorneys, law professors and victim advocates across the country.
Cancer victims’ families say their loved ones should have had their day in court — and that profitable companies shouldn’t be able to use the bankruptcy system to evade lawsuits.
“Bankruptcy is for people that are bankrupt, not billion-dollar companies,” said Lori Knapp, whose father, Edward Chapman, died of mesothelioma in 2020 after spending decades as a construction worker in South Florida. Chapman was always coated in the fine white dust his hopper would kick up when mixing drywall, Knapp remembers. They never knew it was dangerous.
Chapman’s death was a cruel one, Knapp said, with radiation ravaging his once-solid frame.
“Nobody deserves that,” Knapp said.
His last days were also mired by a growing sense of frustration that his claim against Georgia-Pacific would remain unresolved at his death.
“Admit what you did and just hold yourself accountable for your actions. That’s all he wanted,” Knapp said.
Georgia-Pacific has spent more than $2.9 billion defending asbestos claims since 1979.
Some of the victims’ loved ones suspect that companies like Georgia-Pacific hope to wait out asbestos exposure claims. With many exposures having happened decades ago, there may be few family members left to carry on legal battles after cancer deaths, Knapp fears.
“There’s a few others like me that are the daughters or the sons that are taking on the cases, but most of us are in our 60s. They could just keep dragging this out, and then eventually they don’t have to settle with anybody because everybody’s dead,” Knapp said.
There are no signs of claims slowing yet, though. Asbestos exposure lawsuits involving talc jumped 47% in 2025, according to a report by litigation firm KCIC Consulting, with overall asbestos lawsuit filings rising 6% nationally.
It’s unclear how long the Bestwall legal battle may continue.
Plaintiff’s attorneys alleged in April court filings that Bestwall’s lawyers had “given up” on the current case and approached victims’ lawyers about a potential new bankruptcy filing.
Some attorneys for the victims have said that if that happens, it would force them to either accept a less-favorable settlement than they might receive under threat of a jury verdict, or appeal the bankruptcy and face years of further litigation. It would also leave a finite amount of money to pay future claims — and prevent Bestwall from ever being sued in the tort system.
The Charlotte bankruptcy court has not yet signaled whether it will approve any yet-to-be-proposed plans in the case, or whether it will allow an independent trustee to be appointed, which the plaintiff’s attorneys have petitioned for.
As the minutiae of the case drags on, families like the Linebergers and Knapps wait.
Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article316729882.html#storylink=cpy
