PIKEVILLE, Ky. — A federal judge has ordered a Pikeville attorney to turn over boxes of evidence in a high-profile racketeering case filed by 3M.

That ruling came out of the 3M Company’s lawsuit against Glenn Martin Hammond and two out-of-state attorneys, alleging the three worked together to file frivolous lawsuits against the company. 3M claims the attorneys exploited coal miners with black lung and coached them to lie about using 3M dust masks while working in the mines, when the company claims “very few coal workers ever wore dust masks.”

Hammond has previously said 3M’s allegations are “baseless and retaliatory,” and has accused the company of trying to taint the jury pool against the miners and their attorneys.

On Monday, 3M filed an emergency motion for evidence preservation, alleging that Hammond was planning to destroy or hide evidence crucial to the case. The company claimed that Hammond ordered an employee to move dozens of bankers boxes containing case files and other evidence related to the dust mask lawsuits to a storage unit on Bypass Road in Pikeville.

As evidence, 3M presented statements about Hammond’s alleged attempts to conceal or sanitize evidence in past cases from one of his co-defendants, as well as a sworn affidavit from one of his former employees that “Hammond’s practices regularly included falsity in documentation and recordation, falsity with respect to claim timeliness, and intimidation of employees as to such practices.” That former employee also testified to “seeing boxes of 3M-related files that Hammond, by employees, had directed be secretly stored in off-site storage, in a way designed to prevent third-party discovery or cognizance of such materials.”

Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Robert Wier agreed that the evidence was in danger and ordered that it be placed in the care of Pikeville attorney Todd Kennedy.

“There is significant risk of evidence destruction — real danger — based on the current record,” Wier wrote in his order.

Kennedy has been directed to keep all of the evidence in a secure location and begin preparing an inventory of its contents. No one other than Kennedy is allowed to have access to the files, except for Hammond, who can request physical or digital copies of the records, but not the original files themselves.

Hammond and 3M may are allowed to monitor the removal of evidence from the storage units, and the U.S. Marshals Service has been directed to maintain order during that process.

A copy of the judge’s order is reprinted below: