Onetime “king of torts” under siege: “Stan Chesley has defrauded hundreds of former clients through a ‘high-stakes shell game’ apparently orchestrated to avoid paying them a multimillion-dollar judgment, a federal appeals court said.” Following the settlement of a class action over diet drugs for $200 million, lawyers connived with a state judge, who has since been disbarred, to steer most of the proceeds into their own pockets. Clients have been pursuing recovery against Chesley for years, but he has dodged paying the resulting $42 million judgment. Thus far, five lawyers have been disbarred and two jailed in the saga. The Sixth Circuit has now ruled that a district court acted properly in freezing his assets. [Kevin Grasha, Cincinnati Enquirer; Daniel Gill, Bloomberg Law; McGirr v. Rehme] “All told, between his personal assets and the firm’s assets (of which he was sole owner), Chesley managed to lose over $90 million in assets over the course of a single year,” the court said. Of transfers raising “red flags,” some were made to Chesley’s wife, a federal judge; Judge Richard Suhrheinrich cited these in a footnote but said the court was not relying on them as a basis for its decision.
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