A divided panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated most of a legal malpractice case brought by former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints against the polygamist sect’s lawyer, concluding he and his firm were “well aware of the crimes being committed against plaintiffs.”

Thursday’s ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, reversed dismissal of the case, which alleged that attorney Rodney Parker and his Salt Lake City-based law firm, Snow Christensen & Martineau, used the law to help the religious group’s former leader, Warren Jeffs, force underage girls into “spiritual marriages,” while collecting legal fees from individual church members.