Posted on 07/07/2005 5:57:25 AM PDT by OESY
...If a recent federal indictment that refers to Milberg Weiss is anything to go by, the trial bar has its Enron....
Sham "screenings" to round up asbestos plaintiffs, forum shopping for friendly juries, "coupon" settlements that enrich only lawyers and frivolous lawsuits have all become staples of today's tort system. Yet they have received almost no media, much less legal, scrutiny.
...The focus of the charges is retired Palm Springs lawyer Seymour Lazar, who seems to have had a second career as a plaintiff in Milberg Weiss lawsuits. From 1976 to 2004, Mr. Lazar and family members... served as named plaintiffs in more than 50 class actions....
The indictment claims Milberg Weiss quietly slipped Mr. Lazar and family members a share of some $44 million in attorney's fees that it made from these cases. It did so by secretly funneling at least $2.4 million of these kickbacks to Mr. Lazar's lawyer, Paul Selzer, as well as to others....
All of this violates legal norms in which lead plaintiffs... are obliged to act in the best interest of all parties to the class action.
The larger scandal is that few, if any, of these suits had any real merit in the first place. Several cited in the indictment are the kind of "shakedown" suits that helped make Milberg Weiss famous. Many were filed in response merely to a drop in the company's share price, which Mr. Lazar would use as an excuse to claim in a lawsuit that management had "misled" shareholders.
Companies typically settle these suits rather than endure costly and time-consuming litigation....
One question is why Milberg Weiss wasn't indicted given the evidence that is already public. The court papers... further say Milberg Weiss then disguised the payments in its own accounting and issued false tax forms....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
In addition, their effort to make surviving American companies uncompetitive in the global economy is one of the strongest arguments against antibusiness liberal rule. Kickbacks and other illegalities illustrate how tenuous their position is. Let sunlight, and federal prosecutors, disinfect these scoundrels.
And remember, trial lawyers are the #1 money contributors to the democrat party...
I thought that was the strict property of only congresscritters, they are mostly lawyers come to think of it....LOL....
The only people who EVER get anything out of class action lawsuits are the lawyers and that is why I never respond to the notices.
Hmm...DemonRAT donations...who'da thunk it!
Can't have any "conservatives" who follow the law.
< /massive bitter sarcasm off >
bookmark bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.