ATTLEBORO — Richard M. Gaboury says his family put their faith in an Attleboro lawyer to get justice for his late father in a lawsuit against Texas Instruments, and had their trust violated.
His 89-year-old mother Mary Gaboury gave the lawyer, Gail Balser, nearly $17,000 as a retainer and has no hope of getting it back, Richard Gaboury said Monday in a telephone interview.
Balser, an attorney for almost 40 years, was disbarred in December after Gaboury’s family and another family complained to the Board of Bar Overseers.
The Gabourys were among two dozen former employees and the estates of deceased workers of Metals & Controls and Texas Instruments who claimed in a lawsuit that the companies failed to protect workers from radioactive materials and dangerous chemicals.
Gaboury said his father, Richard H. Gaboury, died of leukemia at the age of 58 in 1992. He worked at Metals and Controls before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1951 and then returned after being discharged four years later when the company became known as Texas Instruments.
Gaboury said his mother did receive $150,000 in compensation and medical expenses under a program authorized by Congress in 2001 to help injured or ill atomic weapons industry workers.
During the 1950s, company officials billed the plant as the nation’s largest privately owned fabricator of nuclear fuel.
The family hired Balser in 2015 after a meeting in Attleboro with the other plaintiffs she recruited to file a lawsuit against the companies.
“She came in a brand new $40,000 car,” Gaboury said. “But I thought, well, nothing breeds success like success.”
Gaboury, 68, who now lives in Granville, Vt., a small town east of Middlebury, Vt., said he went to Attleboro High School with Balser’s brother but did not know Gail Baler personally.
The Board of Bar Overseers determined Gail Balser used the money the Gabourys gave her for her own personal use. The board also found she used another lawyer to file the lawsuit after her law license was suspended, claiming to the lawyer she had a conflict rather than disclosing the disciplinary action.
The Sun Chronicle has made repeated attempts to reach Balser. A woman reached Monday at a number listed by the board for Balser said it was the wrong number. The Sun Chronicle also left a message on a phone number listed for her in court documents but did not receive a return call.
The Board of Bar Overseers said Balser did not cooperate with its investigation of the matter.
The multi-million dollar lawsuits against Metals & Controls and Texas Instruments, filed in federal court, were either dismissed or ended in favor of the companies, according to court records.
Gaboury said he was told by another lawyer that the statute of limitations had passed for filing the lawsuit.
Gaboury, who has two younger sisters, said his mother was hoping to use the money to grant as an inheritance to her grandchildren.
The Gabourys have filed a claim to recoup their $17,000 retainer with the Massachusetts Clients’ Security Board. The board disperses funds collected from lawyers throughout the state to reimburse clients whose lawyers have stolen from them.
“We don’t expect anything to come of it,” Gaboury said. “The wind is out of our sails.”
