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A Massachusetts disciplinary committee has recommended a six-month suspension for the former managing partner of Thornton Law Firm LLP for his alleged neglect in signing an inflated attorney fees declaration in a class action against State Street. Two members of a Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers hearing committee recommended that Garrett J. Bradley be sidelined for half a year because the declaration he submitted to a Boston federal judge at the closing of the class action included rates that inflated the firm's fee for the case, according to the May 20 order. The majority's proposed sanction is lighter than the two-year suspension requested by the bar counsel due to its acceptance of Bradley's testimony that he saw the declaration as largely boilerplate language and signed it without reading it. "The majority of the committee does not find that he knew — at the time he signed the declaration and allowed it to be filed on behalf of his firm — that anything in his declaration was not accurate," committee chair Dustin F. Hecker and member Christine Kingston wrote for the majority. The majority's recommendation for a six-month suspension next goes before the Board of Bar Overseers, which will decide what sanction to recommend for the Supreme Judicial Court to impose. Counsel for Bradley declined to comment when reached Monday. Representatives for the Board of Bar Overseers were not immediately available for comment. Thornton, Labaton Sucharow LLP and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP were awarded $75 million in fees in 2016 from State Street Corp.'s $300 million settlement of claims that it cheated its customers out of millions by manipulating exchange rates on foreign exchange trades. Allegations of double-billing and inflated hourly rates for counsel sparked a thorough review by the federal court — including the appointment of a special master — and concluded with the eight-figure fee award being slashed by $15 million. A partner and co-counsel in the case, Bradley on Sept. 14, 2016, approved the firm's calculation of its legal services and costs that would go along with documents from the two other firms for the court to calculate the lodestar amount. But Thornton's papers included inaccurate hourly rates and claimed attorney Michael Bradley — Garrett Bradley's brother — was a Thornton employee who billed $500 per hour, when he was neither employed by the firm nor billed that much. Garrett Bradley later testified the errors were a "stupid mistake." In a dissent from the majority decision, committee member Richard Mackenzie said Bradley should face the presumptive two-year suspension for attorneys who knowingly make a false statement to a court under oath.