I Agree That Attorney Angela Ford Deserves Much KUDOs. Read More.

Attorney toppled diet-drug case Goliaths
By Andrew Wolfson

She stands only 5-foot-3 and says she weighs “just north of 100 pounds.”

She has said she once was so painfully shy that the thought of speaking before a group would cause her stomach to knot and her hands to perspire. She disliked school, earning mostly Bs and Cs at Louisville's Mercy Academy, and in her first year after high school she worked as a dental hygienist.

But Angela Ford grew increasingly confident as she grew older, and went on to become the first female student government president at the University of Louisville.

And now the 51-year-old lawyer has proven herself on a much larger stage.

Taking on powerful interests, virtually by herself, the Lexington practitioner helped expose one of the biggest legal scandals in U.S. history — the theft of tens of millions of dollars from Kentuckians injured by the diet drug fen-phen.

Her five-year fight culminated last month in the sentencing of disbarred lawyers William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. to long prison terms and a court order of $127million in restitution to her 423 clients, who previously were represented by those same lawyers.

Ford will get one-third of what is recovered; she's been paid about $7.5million so far, although part of that has gone to other lawyers who assisted her.

Fellow lawyers applaud Ford's perseverance in what many say was a long-shot challenge against targets that included a judge once named Kentucky's co-judge of the year.

“If somebody had come into my office with this case, I would have said, ‘You've got to be kidding,'” said Louisville trial lawyer Gary Weiss. “She took a difficult case and spent a fortune of time and money, and (has) done a service to her clients and society.”

“She ought to get the lawyer of the year award,” Weiss said, “maybe lawyer of the decade.”

Client Jackie McMurtry of Louisville said: “They tried to block her at every turn. She never faltered.”

And Michael Hance, president of the state's plaintiff trial lawyers group, the Kentucky Justice Association, said, “She has shown that the justice system works.”

Editor's comment: what is particularly spectacular is that Angela turned in one of hers, fellow lawyers, who were giving the Bar a bad name, as if the Bar was not getting its share of bad names -- some well deserved.

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