W.R. Grace & Co. might owe victims of its asbestos products as much as $6.2 billion, a legal scholar hired by attorneys suing the chemical maker said.
Mark A. Peterson, a research scientist at the Rand Corp., estimated that Columbia-based Grace may need to spend from $4.7 billion to $6.2 billion to resolve hundreds of thousands of asbestos cases over several decades.
"Because Grace continued to make and sell asbestos products after other defendants quit, it now faces greater and longer-extending asbestos liability than other defendants," Peterson said in papers filed June 20 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.
In June, a consulting firm hired by Grace concluded a similar study that estimates the value of present and future claims to be significantly less than the one offered by Rand.
The Washington-based consultant, Analysis Research Planning Corp., put the net present value of pending and future claims in the range of between $385 million and $1.3 billion through 2049.
Grace filed for bankruptcy in 2001 to protect itself from 135,000 asbestos claims. Early next year, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Judith K. Fitzgerald is to hold a trial to set a value on the claims, a major step in resolving the company's six-year-old reorganization effort.
Sun reporter Allison Connolly contributed to this article.