Article about Scios Greta van Susteren, her husband John Coale, and employee Loretta Miscavige (DM's recently deceased mother)and their "ambulance-chasing" law firm:

http://www.alamanceind.com/newfol~2/nation_7.html

John Coale - a lawyer heavily involved in the negotiations that produced the cigarette settlement and now wants to sue the gun industry - is another lawyer with a very troubled "past" and a personal life that Coale himself admits he tries to keep as unpublicized as possible.

As of April 1996, Coale, his wife Greta Van Susteren - who is also his partner in a law firm, and the law firm were all the subject of serious bar disciplinary proceedings in West Virginia, whose state bar's discipline board was seeking to suspend their right to practice law in West Virginia for a year as a result of soliciting prospective clients in ways prohibited by bar rules, generally referred to by the public as "ambulance-chasing"; in Coale's case, the term seems particularly appropriate because one of the incidents that landed him in trouble was his law firm's employee allegedly trying to chat up a severely-burned man in an intensive-care unit. Such phone or in-person solicitation of prospective clients is so likely to lead to suspension of a lawyer's law license that it very rarely happens.

As the April 24, 1996 issue of "People Daily" (a web-site offshoot of "People" magazine) described their situation:

"The firm headed by Susteren, her husband John Coale (who recently handled Lisa Marie Presley's divorce from Michael Jackson) and their former law partner Phillip Allen illegally contacted families of West Virginians injured in accidents between 1990 and 1993, the state's Lawyer Disciplinary Board contends. In one incident, the Charleston Daily Mail reported, a firm employee, over the protests of the accident victim's wife, tried to enter a hospital intensive care unit to talk to a man who suffered burns over 60 percent of his body. "We don't do these things in West Virginia," state bar lawyer Sherri Goodman told the paper.

" By the end of 1996, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia had ruled that Coale and his wife were both guilty of professional misconduct in such solicitations, stating:

"Accordingly, we find that respondents Allen, Coale, and Van Susteren engaged in professional misconduct by inducing others to initiate the improper telephone solicitations which we found violative of Rules 7.3(a) and 7.3(b)(1) of the Rules of Professional Conduct."

Coale's "personal life" is also "unconventional"; he and his wife are both prominent in the Church of Scientology, which the public generally considers a cult. As Scientologists, Coale and his wife are very active in a "religion" that believes - as described by the Dec. 13, 1998 St. Petersburg Times: "And what about the fact they belong to a religion that teaches of Xenu, evil head of the Galactic Confederation? Who flew people to Teegeeack (Earth) 75-million years ago in space ships, chained them to volcanos and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, releasing exploded "thetans" that are now the source of most human suffering?" As the St. Petersburg Times quoted Coale in that article:

"I did a lot of drugs back in college," he explained.

"Into the '80s, I didn't do a lot of them, but I felt that I wanted to handle this problem, and Scientology handled it." (Coale is now 52; he would have been in his mid-thirties at the start of the 80s - not a kid in college.)

Coale and his wife are major donors to the Church of Scientology and employ the mother of the current Scientology leader at their law firm. Both Coale and his wife have attained the uppermost ranks possible for Scientologists - and are hardly casual members. Both Coale and his wife are very well connected with the Clintons and he is a big donor to Democratic causes - but he admits that he has to avoid his Washington friends hearing about their involvement with Scientology.

It is time to tell the truth.

Lagniappe

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