Lerach, who recently emerged from an almost two-year stretch in prison, is greatly responsible for this rigged game. As an attorney who filed hundreds of class-action suits against corporations, he became a bigger fraudster than a lot of the companies he was pursuing. First, he filed many dubious suits, rejoicing when 90 percent of the companies decided to settle for millions of dollars rather than spend the time and money fighting. That stratagem wasn’t illegal, but it was grossly unethical — the classic shakedown. Companies called it getting “Lerached.” Second, Lerach and his firms paid fat kickbacks to shifty characters...
