Kentucky Fen-Phen Lawyers Ordered to Turn Over $20 Million to Clients

Article in Monday’s Lexington Herald-Leader — Judge Orders Money in Fund from Fen-Phen Settlement Moved:

Nearly $20 million that had been placed in a controversial fund controlled by three Lexington lawyers should instead be held for 400 of the lawyers’ former clients, a judge has ordered.

On Friday, Special Judge William Wehr ordered that money from the Kentucky Fund for Healthy Living, which was set up using money from a $200 million fen-phen lawsuit settlement in Boone Circuit Court, be placed in a trust for the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, all of whom said they suffered medical problems because they took the diet drug.

Those plaintiffs are now suing their former attorneys: Lexington lawyers William Gallion, Melbourne Mills and Shirley Cunningham Jr. and Cincinnati lawyer Stanley Chesley. The 400 former clients say that their lawyers took more money from the settlement than what they agreed to give them in attorney fees.

According to the article, Wehr ruled earlier this year that Gallion, Mills and Cunningham violated their duty to their clients by taking more than their share of the settlement proceeds.  In August, the Kentucky Supreme Court temporarily suspended the attorneys pending a disciplinary investigation.

HME