Free Republic

This seems to be the year of big-time plaintiffs’ trial lawyers facing bad behavior charges. The latest case is the Kentucky Three – wealthy trial lawyers who are now themselves on trial, accused of stealing $65 million from their clients in a diet drug settlement. During the ongoing – and increasingly bizarre – saga, a new excuse has been articulated by the defense attorney for Melbourne Mills, Jr.: the accused suffered from alcoholism, wasn’t involved in the case and therefore could not be held accountable.

Melbourne Mills' face went from shock to disbelief yesterday as he and co-defendants Shirley Cunningham Jr. and William Gallion were ordered out of a Covington federal courtroom to jail. Just seconds earlier, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman granted the three suspended lawyers' request to delay a criminal trial until January but immediately revoked the suspended lawyers' bond. As Bertelsman walked off the bench, Hale Almand Jr., a lawyer for Gallion, began to protest as the courtroom erupted. Bertelsman cut him off. "I told you that's what I was going to do," Bertelsman said as he left the courtroom. Mills, Cunningham...

PHILADELPHIA -- When word spread that people injured by the fen-phen diet drug cocktail could share in a multibillion dollar legal settlement, law firms began sponsoring health screenings so large that a judge quipped that one doctor's work "would have been the envy of Henry Ford." Tens of thousands of people took echocardiograms _ sometimes on machines set up in hotel rooms _ to see if they had heart valve damage caused by the drugs. Doctors earned hefty fees evaluating tests for lawyers, with some handling as many as 10,000 diagnoses apiece. Years later, people are still arguing whether the...

Just saw an interview with the widower of a woman who apparently died from a lung disease supposedly caused by a diet drug produced by Wyeth (I didn't hear the words "Fen-Phen" ...so I'm not sure if it's related. Anyway, the story indicated that the judgement awarded was $1 billion - which far exceeds Texas' cap on punative damages.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Auditors reviewing the medical records of people slated to receive a share of a $3.75 billion trust fund for people who took the fen-phen diet drug have found "a huge number" that may not have suffered heart-valve damage as claimed, and shouldn't be paid, according to an attorney for the trust. More than 100,000 people have filed the paperwork and presumably telltale echocardiograms that would entitle them to a portion of the settlement fund, set up by Wyeth Inc. to resolve claims related to the recalled fen-phen drugs Pondimin and Redux. But payments to hundreds have been...