SALT LAKE CITY (Legal Newsline) – It’s 14 years later and a lawsuit filed by a lawyer with amnesia who wants a share of personal injury fees generated in Fen-Phen litigation is still going.
On May 14, the Utah Supreme Court made several rulings in the case of Gregory Jones, who worked on Fen-Phen cases for three years at Mackey Price Thompson & Ostler, a now defunct Salt Lake City firm, before his dissociative amnesia forced him to quit.
At stake are hundreds of thousands of dollars from personal injury lawsuits over the side effects of the diet drug, which were sometimes fatal.
Among the most important aspects of the ruling were the reinstatement of Jones’ claim of fraudulent transfer and request for punitive damages, which could boost an existing jury verdict of $647,090. The firm has already paid him $165,000 for his work.
“MPTO’s failure to explain its calculation of Jones’ payment, as well as its possible offset for Jones’ alleged mishandling of cases, make it more likely that MPTO also acted to hinder or delay Jones in his efforts to recover his share of the Fen-Phen fees,” Justice Thomas Lee wrote.
“We hold that there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude by clear and convincing evidence that MPTO acted with actual intent to hinder or delay Jones.”
Jones worked in MPTO’s Fen-Phen program from 2002-2005. Those cases eventually generated more than $1 million for the firm.
Jones claimed he was owed part of those fees and sued MPTO in July 2006. Nine years later, it reached the state Supreme Court for the first time, and the justices affirmed denied some of his claims and ordered a jury trial on others.
The jury reached its decision in March 2017. In June of that year, the trial judge worried that MPTO had reorganized as Mackey Price LLC to avoid paying the judgment, wondering if it was playing a game of “legal whack-a-mole.”
Later that year, the judge included the new company as a judgment debtor. In response, it appealed and created a third company, Mackey Price Law. Jones argued it was abusing state corporation and LLC laws and that the parties were alter egos of each other.
Mackey Price Law, though, was not added to the judgment. The Supreme Court decision tells the trial court to go through the process again to figure out if the second company should be joined to the judgment.
“Once the district court determined that it had jurisdiction over Mackey Price LLC, it should have required Jones to show that Mackey Price LLC was in fact a successor in interest to MPTO,” the ruling says.
“The district court should not have taken Mackey Price LLC’s silence during a special appearance as a concession or endorsement of Jones’ position.”