Story at WSJ. Excerpt:
Stanley Chesley, the famed Ohio trial lawyer brought low by his involvement in a disputed diet-drug lawsuit, could be on the hook for at least $25 million to settle claims that he took $7.5 million more than his share of a 2001 settlement.
Once known as the “Master of Disaster,” Mr. Chesley was disbarred last year in Kentucky after that state’s Supreme Court sanctioned him for professional misconduct in the case, though the court did not require him to pay any restitution. Soon after he surrendered his Ohio law license, effectively ending a decades-long career in mass tort litigation.
Now a Kentucky judge has ruled that Mr. Chesley is indeed “jointly and severally liable” for $42 million in damages awarded to plaintiffs in 2007 against three other lawyers in the case, all of whom were found to have violated their fiduciary duty to their clients.