CHICAGO – A group of attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday to demand new hearings for scores of imprisoned men who claim their confessions were extracted through torture at the hands of Chicago police officers.

The lawsuit gives new hope to more than 100 people who filed claims of torture with a commission of inquiry before its work was halted this summer due to state budget cuts. Only six of those cases have been referred to a judge for further action.

The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, is also a chance to learn the true extent of a scandal in which dozens of men – almost all of them black – claim that, starting in the 1970s, police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers beat or shocked them into confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.