Maybe the article is painting him in this light but what other choice did he have? If he dropped the suit then all the legitimate people wouldn't have any recourse. The people who messed up were the field agents.

He could have properly investigated the identity of the claimants at any time. More like he didn't want to know.

The choice of not breaking the law in collecting names in the first place, of not knowingly going ahead with a case he knew was bogus.

His work was a scam from the start, he had the choice to stop or come clean at every point of the way.

He’s supposed to ensure the people represented exist. That responsibility shouldn’t go away because he paid some poor runners 10$ to write down the names.

Imagine a rule of law where that was a legitimate escape from consequences. I could sue your boss in your name for some made up bogus claim, and when you come out saying: “wtf, I never had any say in this!?” I could walk away clean with a “oh yea, that’s true and I knew that was the case from early on, but I paid this hobo 2$ to write down your name, and I had to carry on, just in case you’d want to actually bring the suit anyway”, while pocketing my cut of the case costs.

> The people who messed up were the field agents.

I'm basing this on your TL;DR, but not only did he know (no way to get rid of the fakes?), it also sounds a little bit like he gave them some winks along the lines of "whatever if they're not real, just bring me claimants".

You'd be surprised. In law enforcement we'd get served with the craziest stuff from criminal targets that were attorneys. They'd literally try to bluff us into believing that whatever statute, evidence, or investigative methods relevant to the case were futile and would end up costing the agency millions in damages awards. In a case like the one in this article, if you can bluff a jury, you're golden. You could literally shoot someone in the public square and get away with it if you convince the jury it was reasonable.