Normally, I link without commentary aside from brief quips or quotes.
My links lead to much commentary and other links- use them all, and you will "get it," if you do not already.
"Scientology, The Clearwater Bar Association, and Judge Greer" I had heard that Greta Van Sustern is a Scientologist, so I hopped on Google and entered those two key words. Here is only only of the items that turned up:
Excerpt: "...John Coale is a Washington, DC-area attorney and high level Scientologist, and the husband of CNN legal commentator - and attorney in her own right -- Greta Van Sustern, also an OT-level Scientologist. ..."
This list below contains the top 75 net-gainers from Reed Slatkin's ponzi scheme, according to December 2001 Trustee 'Interim Report'. The first numerical column represents the amount of money the investor paid to Reed; the second column was what Reed gave back to that investor; the third column is the difference between the amounts represented in first two columns. In some cases, multiple family members were paid back on separate accounts.. so even though Joel Kreiner tops the list, the combined accounts involving Ron Rakow total higher. In the cases involving multiple family accounts, we've noted the other places within this list to look. Link
John Coale & Greta Van Susteren 2,076,130 2,735,000 (658,870)
John Coale is a Washington, DC-area attorney and high level Scientologist, and the husband of CNN legal commentator - and attorney in her own right -- Greta Van Sustern, also an OT-level Scientologist. The Coale-Van Susterns are Key Contributors to the Super Power Building in Florida, which means a donation of $100,000.
Back in May 2001, John Coale raised many eyebrows when he admitted to profitting from Reed's ponzi scheme: "We were lucky," Coale told the Wall Street Journal last week. He and Van Susteren got their initial investment back "and then some," Coale said.
According to this page on lawyers involved in litigation against the gun industry, both Greta and John have faced diciplinary action for so-called "ambulance chasing":
As of April 1996, Coale, his wife Greta Van Susteren - who is also his partner in a law firm, and the law firm were all the subject of serious bar disciplinary proceedings in West Virginia, whose state bar's discipline board was seeking to suspend their right to practice law in West Virginia for a year as a result of soliciting prospective clients in ways prohibited by bar rules, generally referred to by the public as "ambulance-chasing"; in Coale's case, the term seems particularly appropriate because one of the incidents that landed him in trouble was his law firm's employee allegedly trying to chat up a severely-burned man in an intensive-care unit. Such phone or in-person solicitation of prospective clients is so likely to lead to suspension of a lawyer's law license that it very rarely happens.
As the April 24, 1996 issue of "People Daily" (a web-site offshoot of "People" magazine) described their situation:
"The firm headed by Susteren, her husband John Coale (who recently handled Lisa Marie Presley's divorce from Michael Jackson) and their former law partner Phillip Allen illegally contacted families of West Virginians injured in accidents between 1990 and 1993, the state's Lawyer Disciplinary Board contends. In one incident, the Charleston Daily Mail reported, a firm employee, over the protests of the accident victim's wife, tried to enter a hospital intensive care unit to talk to a man who suffered burns over 60 percent of his body. "We don't do these things in West Virginia," state bar lawyer Sherri Goodman told the paper."
By the end of 1996, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia had ruled that Coale and his wife were both guilty of professional misconduct in such solicitations, stating: "Accordingly, we find that respondents Allen, Coale, and Van Susteren engaged in professional misconduct by inducing others to initiate the improper telephone solicitations which we found violative of Rules 7.3(a) and 7.3(b)(1) of the Rules of Professional Conduct."
Coale was a member of the plaintiff steering committee for the Castano Tobacco Litigation, and was also involved in negotiations that produced the tobacco settlement, and participated in this discussion, defending the deal. Recently (December 2001), when informed that he might have to return his ill gotten profits, he responded angrily: "I'll fight this thing for 100 years," said [John] Coale, who said he made the decision to invest the couple's money with Slatkin starting 10 years ago. "Most of that money went to the IRS."
[snip]
