Kenneth Kellogg, et al. v. Watts Guerra LLP, et al.

The Kellogg, et al. lawsuit and this petition address whether lawyers can mislead 60,000 corn growers across the United States into signing 40 percent contingent fee retainer contracts to pursue individual lawsuits, exclude those corn growers from pending Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 class actions without their knowledge and informed consent, and then take their property interests in the litigation proceeds without their approval. In law school, these transgressions, if presented as a hypothetical, would be disparaged. But in the harsh reality of federal court multidistrict litigation (MDL), the transgressions are accepted as the costs of efficiency, as MDL judges cannot be judged, class action and mass tort lawyers must get paid, and the Fifth Amendment due process rights of 60,000 American corn growers are trampled in the dirt. The Tenth Circuit decisions in this case – denying jurisdiction to review an MDL transfer decision, allowing the lawyers to privately contract clients and absent class members out of a Rule 23 class action, disregarding the judicial recusal mandates that attach to a legal malpractice lawsuit transferred to the MDL judge who was misled by the lawyers to allow the private contract opt-outs, and disregarding 247 years of American jurisprudence addressing attorney deceit – should be reviewed by this Court on the merits. The questions presented are: 1. Can a party who unsuccessfully challenges a Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL Panel)