The Madison Record reports: "Judge denies motion to stay discovery in RICO suit over Avery v. State Farm; appeal and motion for class certification filed"--
A lawsuit alleging fraudulent activity in Avery v. State Farm is moving forward as a federal judge last month denied the defendants’ motion to stay to discovery.
And it appears that the plaintiffs – Mark Hale, Todd Shale and Carly Vickers Morse— are preparing for a battle as court records show more than 20 attorneys are now representing them.
The trio of plaintiffs, all of whom were plaintiffs in the 1997 nationwide class action Avery v. State Farm, filed a federal lawsuit in May 2012 against State Farm, William Shepherd, an attorney at the insurance company, and Ed Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League (ICJL).
They accuse the defendants of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations (RICO) Act by creating an enterprise “to enable State Farm to evade payment of a $1.05 billion judgment affirmed in favor of approximately 4.7 million State Farm policyholders.”
The article is a little convoluted but worth attempting to parse, especially for those with long memories (like me) of Lloyd Karmeier's election to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2004. According to the plaintiffs in the RICO lawsuit, Karmeier's election was part of a scheme to get a lower court's judgment in Avery v. State Farm overturned, which is what ultimately happened--
The plaintiffs assert that the defendants implemented their scheme in two phases, the first of which involved recruiting, financing and electing a candidate to the Illinois Supreme Court who would vote to overturn the judgment against State Farm once elected.
That phase, the suit contends, was completed when Lloyd Karmeier won the 2004 race for the Fifth District seat on the state high court and nine months later, voted in favor of overturning the billion-dollar judgment against State Farm.
The suit goes on to claim that the second phase took place in 2005 and 2011, when State Farm filed alleged misrepresentations to the Supreme Court in response to the plaintiffs’ requests for the justices to vacate their decision overturning judgment.
The plaintiffs are represented, among others, by "Mississippi attorney Don Barrett, Tennessee attorneys W. Gordon Ball and Charles Barrett, Louisiana attorneys Patrick Pendley and Nicholas Rockforte and Alabama attorneys Tom Thrash, Steven Martino, Richard Taylor and Lloyd Copeland"--familiar names on the plaintiffs' side. The defendants are represented by "Edwardsville attorney Patrick Cloud and Chicago attorneys Joseph Cancila Jr., J. Timothy Eaton and James Gaughan," in addition to Richard O’Brien, David Greenfield, Russell Scott and Laura Oberkfell.
Related posts from the days when tort-reform issues occupied more of my blogging time (this blog has a long memory too)--
1. The Legal Underground's Tort Reform Glossary
2. Our City's Most Amateur Newspaper, the Madison County Record, Is Revealed To Be a Fraud
3. A Trial Lawyer's Notebook: Election 2004
4. The Best Judges Business Can Buy
5. Other posts from the "Tort Reform 1" and "Tort Reform 2" categories
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