The Legal Reader

Ron Sheffer, a former Western Kentucky University quarterback who served 14 years on the board of his alma mater, already was a prominent trial attorney in Henderson when he set out in the mid-1990s to create a statewide law firm.

He eventually expanded the firm to six other cities, including Louisville, and recruited such big-name talent as future Lt. Gov. Steve Pence, former U.S. Attorney Joe Whittle, ex-Attorney General Chris Gorman and former federal judge Gene Brooks of Evansville, Ind.

Eventually 40 lawyers — 125 employees in all — worked in Sheffer's offices from Paducah to Lexington.

And he enjoyed the trappings of its success: From 1998 to 2002, he grossed $2.6 million, according to court records. He owned thoroughbred horses. He and his wife owned condominiums in Nashville, Tenn., and Scottsdale, Ariz., as well as an apartment in Owensboro and a $700,000 mansion on Cherokee Parkway in Louisville.

But now Sheffer, 66, is mired in a $16.9 million bankruptcy case in which a judge has refused to discharge his debt after finding he diverted assets to his wife in a series of transactions the judge said bore the "badges of fraud."

Bummer, dude. Details here from the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal.