Yet another lawyer may have crossed a line while pressing lawsuits against Wyeth over the withdrawal of the fen-phen diet pills. This time, George Fleming, a well-known plantiff’s attorney, is being sued by former clients who claim he improperly fed his piggy bank by charging his clients for echocardiograms that were given to thousands of other people who he ultimately did not represent. The tests were needed to determine whether an individual was harmed by the pills.

In their lawsuit, which has gone to trial, 10 of Fleming’s former clients allege they learned after their 2006 settlement that about 8,100 claimants he represented were charged for echocardiograms that were given to 35,000 people who were rejected as clients, The Houston Chronicle reports. They were rejected because the tests showed they did not suffer any harm from taking the pills. Wyeth, which is now owed by Pfizer, withdrew one-half of the fen-phen diet-pill cocktail along with a chemically similar drug called Redux in 1997.

Why would Fleming have done this? An ex-associate at his law firm testified Fleming was unhappy that so much effort had netted the firm $41 million in fees after expenses. “He said he had worked too long and too hard for a lousy $41 million,” Jim Doyle testifed, the paper writes, adding that he left the firm after objecting to Fleming’s decision to include non-client expenses among those billed to clients.

Here’s the counterpoint: Fleming’s lawyers argue his former clients are the greedy ones, because they fail to acknowledged they benefited from negative echocardiograms because these added credibility to the testing procedures and ultimately made Wyeth more willing to settle.

Another lawyer who sued Wyeth over the diet pills ran into trouble two years ago. In late 2008, a federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of Robert Arledge for his role in swindling the drugmaker out of $6.7 million during litigation over its diet pills. He was the only lawyer charged in a joint investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of fraudulent claims in a $400 million settlement fund and subsequent settlements over the litigation (back story).