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A Florida federal judge has decided against sanctioning two law firms that signed documents in place of their clients but chastised their lawyers' "obviously improper" act, which could have cut their clients out of their share of the $6 billion settlement in the 3M combat earplugs multidistrict litigation.

Since a majority of the releases at issue have now been signed by the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers said Friday that she doesn't think the court should take further action, according to her order. But she did note that the erroneous signatures could have spelled disaster for the claimants, military veterans and service members who said they suffered hearing loss due to allegedly faulty combat earplugs produced by 3M subsidiary Aearo Technologies LLC.

"It is worth noting that, had primary counsel not cured the deficiency by providing the 'wet signatures,' the releases as signed by counsel would not have been accepted by 3M and these claimants would not be eligible for the settlement program and their cases would be subject to dismissal," the judge said. "Out of the 252,943 claimants participating in the settlement program — represented by 339 different primary counsel firms — only these two firms signed releases for their clients."

Judge Rodgers' order declared as moot the issue of law firms Morris Bart LLC and Brent Coon and Associates submitting "fraudulent release[s]," specifically by signing documents on behalf of 16 of the plaintiffs in the MDL. These releases indicated a plaintiff's intention to partake in the settlement program and drop all potential claims against 3M.

While processing the more than 250,000 releases, 3M said it noticed that 16 of them seemed to be signed by someone other than the veterans or service members who had sued, according to the court record. Upon further review, Judge Rodgers said that the releases contained irregularities, specifically that the signatures were "dissimilar" to the plaintiffs' photo IDs and that the writing style indicated they might have been done by the same person.

On May 1, Judge Rodgers ordered the two firms to tell her if these were indeed the real signatures of the plaintiffs and, if they were not, to explain why she should not hit them with sanctions.

The firms admitted that their clients did not in fact sign these documents.

Morris Bart represented more than 1,300 veterans and service members in the MDL, just over 900 of whom were eligible to receive the settlement, according to the court record. It explained that 15 of their clients "unequivocally" wanted to participate in the settlements but were unable to sign online, according to a filing it submitted on May 15. It said that these 15 clients gave explicit permission to put their names on the releases.