Lerach sentencing shows need for congressional probe

It's time for someone to clean up the trial lawyer stables.

“lerach sentencing shows need for congressional probe...”

should read, “adolescents who abuse their freedom, paid for with someone else’s blood, should be overseen by a parental surrogate.”

It may happen but it won't by the congresscritters. Remember, it was a Federal judge in TX, who in an earlier life had been a nurse, that understood that the plaintiffs in one medical class action suit (asbestos) were also members in a subsequent medical class action suit (?name?) and that the two maladies were incompatible with one another.

What it will take is for some other judge (probably a retired Federal judge)who heard one of disgraced firm's cases to investigate to see if there was a fraud committed upon the Court.

Has anyone seen the “letter” referred to in this article? Please post if you know hwere it can be found.

Thanks

My heart glows with warm satisfaction at the thought of hundreds of dirty greedy lying trial lawyers losing their livelihoods and getting thrown into the stony lonesome for a decade or two. That's one way McCain can endear himself to me if he gets elected: an all-out jihad against the scum and filth of the plaintiff's bar.

-ccm

“...against the scum and filth of the plaintiff’s bar...”

hey, you forgot one....”against the scum and filth and adolescent punks of the plaintiff’s bar.”

Bloomberg February 12, 2008

ENRON LAWYER GETS 2 YEARS (the third ex-senior partner of New York-based Milberg Weiss law firm convicted in the eight-year federal probe)

Bill Lerach, the lawyer who helped recover $7.2 billion for Enron Corp. investors and whose "race to the courthouse" strategy led to limits on shareholder suits, was sentenced to two years in prison for paying client kickbacks.

Lerach, 61, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in October and agreed to serve as much as two years in prison. Last week, the US sought the maximum sentence under the deal, while Lerach requested half of that. The maximum allowed by law is five years. Lerach also must forfeit $7.75 million and pay a $250,000 fine........

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02122008/business/enron_lawyer_gets_2_years_97277.htm

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BACKSTORY The fall of America's meanest law firm; Milberg Weiss, the lawsuit factory that took corporations for $45 billion, is in the feds' cross hairs.

By Peter Elkind, Fortune editor-at-large November 3, 2006

(Fortune Magazine) -- For decades, few things have inspired as much fear and loathing in the executive suites of corporate America as the law firm of Milberg Weiss and the two outsized personalities who ruled the place, Mel Weiss and Bill Lerach. Through creativity and ruthlessness, they transformed the humble securities class-action lawsuit into a deadly weapon.

Always, Milberg Weiss cast itself as the champion of the little guy. In media interviews Lerach has spoken evocatively about fighting for the honest, struggling blue-collar worker who, through no fault of his own, had lost his hard-earned savings to corporate perfidy. The firm boasts of having collected $45 billion for cheated investors since its founding in 1965.

But somewhere along the way, the work made its ruling partners a little like the CEOs they sued. In an especially profitable year, both Weiss and Lerach personally made more than $16 million.

Weiss, 71, is a high roller at casinos who collects Picassos, owns a five-acre waterfront estate on Oyster Bay, Long Island, and has a vacation condo in Boca Raton.

The Brillo-haired Lerach, 60, who bitterly split with Weiss in 2004, taking Milberg's San Diego-based West Coast operation along with him in a new firm, owns a home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and vacation properties in Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Hawaii. Lerach travels the country in a chartered jet, says his exercise is drinking Scotch, and will be married this month for the fourth time, to a partner at his firm.

Weiss and Lerach have also found themselves in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors. In the most extraordinary federal case now afoot in the land, Milberg Weiss has been indicted for allegedly paying three plaintiffs $11.4 million in illegal kickbacks in about 180 cases spanning 25 years - and then repeatedly lying about it to the courts.

The government says Milberg kept paying kickbacks into 2005, long after the firm knew it was under investigation. Name partners David Bershad, 66, and Steven Schulman, 55, have also been charged. (Both have pleaded not guilty, as has the firm.) The criminal probe has triggered an exodus of lawyers and clients. Once a veritable lawsuit factory - the firm averaged more than one new case a week during 2005 - Milberg has filed just a handful of suits in the five months since the bombshell landed.

And the feds are far from finished: Prosecutors have advised the presiding judge that there is "a significant chance" of a new indictment naming other defendants. Although both Weiss and Lerach insist they have done nothing illegal, the Justice Department has formally notified both that they are targets of the criminal probe. The two appear throughout the 102-page indictment as "Partner A" and "Partner B."

Even as its empire crumbles, Milberg Weiss has fired back, belittling the government's evidence, wrapping itself in legal principle, charging partisan politics by the trial-lawyer-hating Bush administration, and accusing the Justice Department of gross overreaching. But the truth is that Milberg Weiss is hemorrhaging from self-inflicted wounds: greed, hubris, lies, conflicts of interest, and shockingly poor governance - the very sort of venality and dysfunction that make for a juicy class-action lawsuit. --SNIP--

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393127/?postversion=2006103111

EXCERPT—EXAMINER Federal prosecutors estimate that more than $200 million in legal fees went to Milberg Weiss as a result of kickbacks in at least 150 cases. So the overall cost to shareholders, investors and the public in lost jobs and diminished investment portfolios may never be quantified.

Worse was the willful abuse of the court system by Lerach and two other Milberg Weiss lawyers who have also pleaded guilty in the case.

They took advantage of litigation rules that awarded lead counsel status to the first firm that filed a case. Having ready-made plaintiffs on call made the firm millions of dollars until a 1995 law reduced the early filing advantage.