The Silicosis Bar Association
Plaintiffs lawyers love to expose a business defendant’s internal communications. But when it comes to throwing a light on their own inside work, fuhgettaboutit. Last week the lawyers who've orchestrated the great silicosis law suit scam even tried to clam up before Congress. Still, the Members elicited some extraordinary information from these attorneys, who a federal judge blasted last year for having ginned up some10,000 bogus silicosis cases. Most refused to turn over even basic documents requested by the House oversight subcommittee, citing "attorney-client" privilege. Never mind that this privilege belongs to the client; most of the lawyers admitted they hadn’t bothered to ask if their clients were willing to waive it. The Waco, Texas, firm of Campbell Cherry has yet to cough up a “privileged” form letter it mass-mailed to 18,OOO asbestos clients,
soliciting them to be screened for silicosis.
To their credit the Members dug out important new details about how the legal community concocted these silicosis suits. As the yet-unseen
Campbell Cherry letter suggests, the lawyers' strategy was to take the firms' "inventories" of asbestos clients and -with the help of a few doctors - then claim that many of these same people now had silicosis. This is important, and not only because it is rare to have both asbestos and silicosis. The hearing suggested that at least a few firms knew it was rare and took steps to mask their double-dipping.
The now-defunct Houston firm of O'Quinn, Laminack & Pirtle, for instance, liked to point out that its firm doesn't handle asbestos cases. (The argument being-that it therefore couldn't profit twice.) Former partner Richard Laminack repeated this denial to congress last week. Yet the very same day, several Silicosis defendants filed a motion in Mississippi court claiming that, in 2002, the O'Quinn firm had represented a Roger Redditt in both asbestos and silicosis claims. According to the motion, Mr. Redditt was diagnosed with both diseases by the same Dr. Ray Harron and the suits were filed within weeks of each other.
The Redditt case also appears to be just one example of how O'Quinn used the same clients twice. Mr.Laminack admitted to Congress that O'Quinn had once financed a separate Houston law firm, Foster Harssema. The Foster firm then handled asbestos claims, while the O'Quinn firm handled silicosis. Mr. Laminack acknowledged that he and another former O’Quinn partner were listed as managers, of the Foster firm, and that O'Quinn collected referral fees for asbestos cases that Foster won.
None of these suits would have been possible without a handful of for-hire doctors. Some of these docs have since recanted their diagnoses; others have taken the Fifth. Congress got the lawyers to fill in some blanks about their relationships with these “experts.” Campbell Cherry partner Billy Davis confirmed that his law firm had provided doctors with the language they were to use in silicosis diagnoses-the better to make them admissible in court. Mr. Davis, who made quite a to-do in his opening statement about his firm's high standards, admitted that his firm had only paid screening companies for positive diagnoses.
Last week’s hearing left much unanswered, but it was a start. Federal and state investigations into the silicosis scam so far have focused mainly on doctors and screening companies who were on the front-lines of recruiting patients. It's now clear that these were small fry. They were taking orders from those who stood to profit most from more lawsuits: the lawyers. All roads lead back to them.