Kentucky

The Herald Leader has a story putting the current Kentucky Diet Drug trial into perspective since it is not the only trial involving these claims, nor is it the only trial in which concerns about counsel and criminal activity have been raised. 

First, I would like to say that the Herald Leader's reporters have been doing a  phenomenal job in covering this local development which has had some nationwide coverage.

Second, remember that it is easy to make assumptions and express opinions about the culpability of the participants, but let us not forget that we are a nation of laws and that all are presumed innocent until a court of law determines guilt.

Here is the story that the Kentuckyh Fen-Phen lawyers of Cunningham, Gallion, and Mills is clearly "Not the first fen-phen trial to create controversy".  Controversy has ensued over not only the lawyers but also the medical doctors reading the diagnostic films.

Another story from the Herald Leader is styled "Fen-phen trial grabbing attention" by Jim Warren at the Herald Leader.

Not the first fen-phen trial to create controversy

Since the late 1990s, there have been allegations in other states that doctors, working with lawfirms, certified claims of fen-phen injuries without actually examining the patients. In other instances, it was alleged that lawyers paid doctors extra money for performing medical diagnoses that produced fen-phen claims. It also was alleged that law firm representatives in some cases instructed staffers in doctors' offices in how to conduct fen-phen examinations in ways that would generate more claims.

Some class-action lawyers also have gotten into trouble recently in cases involving fen-phen.

Famed Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs, who arranged the $206 billion national tobacco settlement in the 1990s, pleaded guilty in March to a charge of conspiring to bribe a judge in a dispute over attorney fees growing out of lawsuits from Hurricane Katrina. And last month, prominent New York litigator Melvyn Weiss, a specialist in securities class-action law, pleaded guilty to charges that he helped conceal millions in kickbacks his firm made to plaintiffs over 25 years. His one-time law partner, William Lerach, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the same case.