He’s busted pedophile priests. Now he’s representing America’s top gymnasts. For victims of abuse, John Manly is   THE ADVOCATE

John Manly has every reason to fume. He just stepped into his corner office at the eighth-floor headquarters of Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, the Irvine law firm involved in some of the largest sex-abuse settlements in the United States over the past 20 years. The firm’s win column is stunning: more than $1 billion in damages against Catholic dioceses across the United States. $228 million against the Los Angeles Unified School District. More than $200 million against the Jesuits in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Victories against private businesses, county governments, individual molesters and so many more.

On Manly’s desk sit mountains of depositions for his firm’s next opponent: USA Gymnastics. His team represents more than 300 women who claim that officials at the gymnastics federation and at Michigan State University knew that team physician Larry Nassar sexually molested them, yet did nothing to stop him. Nassar has already pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sexual assault and child pornography in a saga that has riveted the country and has brought Manly universally positive coverage for perhaps the first time in his career.

But he’s thinking about none of that goodwill right now. Right now, Manly is riveted to his iPhone, where he watches a live feed of interim MSU President John Engler addressing the Michigan State Senate’s higher education subcommittee. Engler is complaining that an aggressive “California plaintiffs’ lawyer” wants to bilk Michigan taxpayers by refusing to accept the school’s