Lenders abusing clients' trust and ripping off millions of indigent people. Alleged collusion between the victims' lawyers and the defendants. It could be a plot from the pages of John Grisham―but this tale comes from an opinion by U.S. District Judge Elaine E. Bucklo of Chicago. She recently took the highly unusual move of barring a half-dozen plaintiff attorneys from representing the claimants as a class, calling their work "inadequate." On behalf of a potential class of 17 million plaintiffs, the attorneys were going to settle for $25 million―and pocket $4.3 million for themselves. Two of those attorneys, Howard Prossnitz and Francine Schwartz, asked to be reinstated, a motion Bucklo denied May 2.
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