FRANKFORT — Closing arguments are likely to begin Wednesday in the retrial of two disbarred Lexington-area lawyers accused of taking $94 million from their former clients in a diet-drug settlement.
Shirley Cunningham Jr. (left), William Gallion (right)
This is the second trial on wire fraud and other charges for William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr., and it’s just the latest chapter in the legal saga over what happened to a $200 million settlement in Boone Circuit Court.
In July, a federal judge declared a mistrial after a jury in Covington deadlocked on whether Cunningham and Gallion were guilty of wire fraud. Melbourne Mills Jr., a third lawyer who also was part of the $220 million settlement, was acquitted by the same jury.
Prosecutors say Gallion and Cunningham refused to disclose the amount of the total settlement to their clients, paid them less than they were supposed to and falsely told them that they would go to jail if they told anyone how much they received from the settlement. Gallion and Cunningham, under their contracts with their clients, were to receive approximately a third of the settlement, but they took more than half, prosecutors say.
Defense lawyers say Gallion and Cunningham were inexperienced with mass-tort or class-action law and that any mistakes were unintentional. The former lawyers were following the advice of famed Cincinnati trial lawyer Stanley Chesley and the original judge on the case, they have argued.
The retrial, which began Feb. 19 in federal court in Frankfort, nearly ended in a mistrial for Gallion after his lawyer suffered health problems during the trial. But O. Hale Almand, a Georgia attorney who has represented Gallion in both trials, was able to return to court, saving his client from a possible third trial.
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