Sounds to me like some folks need serious jail time.

W. L. Carter knew there was something fishy going on when he went to his lawyersÂ’ office a few years ago to pick up his settlement check for the heart damage he had sustained from taking the diet drug combination fen-phen.

The check was, for starters, much smaller than he had expected. And his own lawyers threatened to retaliate against him if he ever told anyone, including his family, how much he had been paid. “You will be fined $100,000, you will go to jail and you will be sued,” Mr. Carter recalled them saying.

Mr. Carter was right to have been suspicious. The lawyers defrauded their clients, a state judge has ruled in a civil case, when they settled fen-phen lawsuits on behalf of 440 of them for $200 million but kept the bulk of the money for themselves. Legal experts said the fraud might be one of the biggest and most brazen in legal history.

This week, several clients testified before a federal grand jury that has begun to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing arising from the settlement.

“It enrages me,” said Sonja Pickett, a retail manager, who testified Thursday before the grand jury. “They robbed us.”

I won't trash trial lawyers or class-action suits, because I recognize that lawyers are necessary and class action suits are sometimes the best way to deal with an injustice. However, too often they become a vehicle to enrich lawyers -- and the secrecy/confidentiality agreements that go with the settlements often close off justice. Indeed, ANY court order that closes the results of the justice system to the eyes of the public needs to be strongly questioned by the American people as a violation of the principle that the workings of the courts are to be public.

Posted by: Greg at 01:58 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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