Murdered Michigan Lawyer Had ‘No Shortage of Enemies’
Police are investigating the murder of a Michigan med-mal defense lawyer found dead on Wednesday from multiple gunshot wounds in the entry of his apartment.
The slain lawyer, Nicholas Anthony Ianni, had practiced law in Bloomfield Hills and was associated with an offshore malpractice insurance company that was accused of failing to pay claims, according to MyFoxDetroit.com and the Oakland Press. “We’re told the 55-year-old medical malpractice attorney had no shortage of enemies,” the Fox story says.
Fox News says Ianni recently entered into a $20 million consent decree and “owed a lot of people a lot of money.”
Ianni represented the Bermuda insurance company called Universal International Insurance Ltd. and defended its insured doctors in court, according to an August story in Michigan Lawyers Weekly. Two lawyers told the publication they won cases against physicians insured by Universal, but the insurer wasn’t paying the judgments.
One of the lawyers quoted in the Lawyers Weekly article, Jules Olsman, spoke to the Oakland Press. He said Ianni agreed to a $200,000 settlement in a med-mal case, but the insurer never paid. “We firmly believe that Mr. Ianni’s handiwork was all throughout the whole thing,” Olsman said. “This was not a legitimate, square business.”
