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.
