One side effect of the infamous fen-phen litigation is about to be heard in a Kentucky courtroom today. A jury will decide whether three lawyers - Shirley Cunningham Jr., William Gallion and Melbourne Mills Jr. - committed a federal crime by allegedly plundering the state’s $200 million settlement for 440 people who suffered heart injuries from the once-popular diet pills, The Louisville Courier-Journal writes.

A government expert says the trio violated “basic moral tenets of honesty and respect for the property of others we learn first as children.” And the prosecution will try to prove that the former lawyers defrauded their clients by taking $65 million more than they were due in what has been called one of the biggest legal frauds in US history, the paper reports.

The government will present as many as 40 witnesses to show how the lawyers moved money between bank accounts, allegedly violating four laws and 13 ethics rules. Some of the money, the paper writes, went to buy a Porsche, a BMW and courtside seats at the local Rupp Arena. If convicted, the lawyers, who have pleaded not guilty, could receive up to 20 years in prison.

The indictment also seeks damages of $45 million and the return of more than $20 million that the lawyers placed in a charitable fund that they paid themselves $149,800 each to manage. The defendants have conceded that “some matters could have been handled differently, so as to cause less suspicion and criticism,” one of their lawyers told the paper.

But in court papers, according to the paper, the defendants say their former clients were handsomely compensated and that their fees - $75 million for themselves, $30 million for consultants and other lawyers - were approved by a judge, although that judge later resigned after being accused of misconduct in the case.

The case has captured international attention in part because Gallion and Cunningham used part of their settlement money to purchase Curlin, last year’s Preakness winner and Horse of the Year. The trio has been held since August in the Boone County Jail. Neither they nor their attorneys would comment, but Mills’ lawyer, Jim Shuffett, told the paper he expects his client to be acquitted.

As many as 20 plaintiffs - the defense has moved to prohibit calling them “victims” - are expected to testify, including W. L. Carter, an industrial model maker from Lawrenceburg, Ky., who said he has been looking forward to the trial. “This is about righting a terrible wrong,” he tells the paper. “We have been hurt twice, first by the drug, then by our own lawyers.”

Twenty-five of the original plaintiffs have died, some from drug-related injuries, Angela Ford, a Lexington lawyer who reps more than 400 of them in a suit against their former attorneys, tells the paper. Some lawyers in Northern Kentucky, where the original case was litigated, say they fear the scandal has eroded the credibility of all attorneys. “It’s a blight on all of us,” Burr Travis tells the paper.

The government says it will prove the three lawyers conspired to pull off a brazen scheme between May 2001 and June 2005. The outlines of the alleged plot have been laid out in the civil case: Instead of taking one-third of the settlement, as called for in their contracts, they extracted nearly two-thirds in payments to themselves and others, the paper writes.

Their clients received $74.2 million of the $200 million that Wyeth paid in 2001 to settle the Kentucky class-action case.

The government says it will show the lawyers never told their clients the total amount of the settlement or their own allocation; never gave them a chance to comment on the settlement or attorney fees; never gave them copies of anything they signed; falsely told some they would be jailed if they divulged what they were paid; and intentionally withheld from presiding Judge Joseph “Jay” Bamberger the fact that they had contracts limiting their fees to 30 percent to 33 percent.

A government expert, Northern Kentucky University law professor Edward Brewer, also will testify that Gallion’s claim in 2002 that clients were “thrilled” to give away excess funds to a charitable fund was “bovine excrement,” as he described it in a pretrial report, according to the paper.

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