WLWT
November 14, 2011
http://www.wlwt.com/r/29766964/detail.html
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| Stan Chesley |
A high-profile attorney who is facing possible debarment in Kentucky is being sued by plaintiffs he represented in a class-action suit involving sexual abuse victims.
Two lawsuits in Kenton County allege that attorneys Stan Chesley and Robert Steinberg defrauded the 252 sexual abuse victims who shared an $84 million class-action settlement with the Diocese of Covington.
Chesley and Steinberg are accused of promising the victims more money than they actually got and of telling them that their payments would be reduced or delayed if they didn't support the attorneys' fees.
Chesley and Steinberg have denied the allegations, calling them "baseless" and "frivolous." They said the victims had the opportunity to challenge the dollar amounts while the case was pending in Boone Circuit Court. They also pointed to an audit that found the settlement money was handled with sound accounting principles.
They asked Judge Robert McGinnis to block the suits as an improper attack on the "integrity of the settlement," but he declined on Nov. 4.
Their attorney, David Sloan, said he will ask that both cases be dismissed.
The lawsuits come as the Kentucky Supreme Court weighs whether to disbar Chesley because of alleged misconduct in a separate class-action lawsuit. The Kentucky Bar Association recommended in June that Chesley be disbarred after finding that he took excessive fees and covered up misconduct by other attorneys in a $200-million settlement involving the diet drug fen-phen.
Thomas Clay, an attorney who filed one of the lawsuits in Kenton County, said his clients are not unhappy with the amount of the settlement.
"We're not attacking the fairness of the settlement," Clay said. "...We are attacking the way in which the settlement was administered" by the lawyers.
The lawsuits ask that Chesley and Steinberg's Cincinnati law firm be forced to forfeit fees charged in the case that are estimated at $18.5 million.
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