Overlawyered » accounting

“FASB Disclosure Proposal: Back To The Drawing Board”

Walter Olson — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:09:19 +0000

A much-criticized scheme to require businesses to disclose details of their litigation exposures is on hold for now. [Cal Biz Lit; earlier here, here, etc.] More: Carter at ShopFloor.

Tags: accounting

August 26 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:17:44 +0000

Eugene Volokh on Lineage II “addictive videogame” lawsuit [Volokh Conspiracy, earlier]
New “Trial Lawyers Inc.” report on environmental litigation [Manhattan Institute, related from Jim Copland on a Richard Blumenthal suit]
Furor continues over Philadelphia’s $300 “business privilege tax” on bloggers and other low-revenue businesses [City Paper, Instapundit, Atlantic Wire, Kennerly]
“DoJ seeks Ebonics translators” story affords glimpse of oft-abused market for prosecution experts [Ken at Popehat]
Much more on FASB show-the-adversary-your-cards litigation accounting proposals [Cal Biz Lit and more, Beck, Hartley, ShopFloor, PoL (with Chamber views), earlier]
“The Many Ways In Which Fashion Copyrights Will Harm The Fashion Industry” [Masnick, TechDirt, on the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, earlier links here]
Denmark carries out a real-world experiment in the incentive effects of unemployment compensation [Stossel]
“Junk fax” suit demands $2 trillion [eight years ago at Overlawyered]

Tags: accounting, bloggers and the law, copyright, Denmark, environment, expert witnesses, Philadelphia, taxes, unemployment benefits, videogames

FASB proposal on litigation disclosure, redux

Walter Olson — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:12:38 +0000

Bruce Nye at Cal Biz Lit finds the notion of requiring companies to assess, explain and quantify their litigation exposures, and then put the results up on the internet for opponents to peruse, “not helpful. Not helpful at all.” [earlier at Point of Law] Much more from Beck at Drug and Device Law.

Tags: accounting

June 30 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 05:10:04 +0000

Real-life Lysistrata: “Kenyan man sues over sex boycott ’stress’” [Telegraph]
Kagan record not reassuring on campaign-speech issues [Allison Hayward, CCP, Daniel Shuchman/Reason] A “fair-weather originalist”? [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
Eugene Volokh thinks the Court made the right call in the student-group-recognition Christian Legal Society case, while Richard Epstein thinks it didn’t;
Coverage of Ted Frank’s objection in A.G. Edwards settlement [Daniel Fisher, Forbes; Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
West Virginia: “Was DuPont railroaded in Harrison County?” [Don Surber]
“Predicate” approach hasn’t always worked well as way to curb government privacy incursions [Stewart Baker]
“Florida Court Tosses Out $522 Million Verdict Against Accounting Firm” [Daily Business Review]
Justice Department dereliction? “Inside the Black Panther case” [J. Christian Adams, Washington Times]

Tags: accounting, campaign regulation, class action settlements, Elena Kagan, Ted Frank, West Virginia

Bernard Madoff and Milberg Weiss, cont’d

Walter Olson — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:57:01 +0000

A week ago I briefly noted that now-imprisoned securities class action king Mel Weiss appeared on the list of Bernard Madoff victims (163-pp. PDF courtesy WSJ, via Christopher Fountain) and observed how ironic it seemed that someone who made great claims to expertise in sniffing out stock fraud should have been taken in by it.

According to correspondence from New York securities lawyer (and longtime Weiss critic) Howard Sirota, however, there might be to the story than that:

I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to the conclusion that Mel Weiss [fouled] up investing with Madoff.

Weiss’ wife and son Stephen A. Weiss invested with Madoff, as did [Milberg Weiss partners] David Bershad and Pat Hynes.

In addition, convicted serial Milberg plaintiff Howard Vogel invested with Madoff.

Buchbinder Tunick, Milberg’s accountants and ironically Milberg’s principal forensic accounting experts, appear on the list, although the entries may be clients of the Buchbinder firm.

Class action firms Wolf Popper and Wolf Haldenstein also appear.

Sirota believes that other persons and entities on the Madoff victims list have also served as lead plaintiffs in securities litigation or as plaintiffs in other litigation handled by class-action firms. All of which could be mere coincidence, or could suggest that either Madoff himself or others in his circle might have played some role in funneling lead plaintiffs to the class-action bar. (Particularly in the “race to the courthouse” era that preceded the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, having a stable of cooperative repeat plaintiffs was vital to the success of many plaintiff’s firms.)

One way to check this thesis, Sirota suggests, would be to check the names on the Madoff victims list against those on the list of plaintiffs maintained by the Stanford Law School securities class action clearinghouse to see whether there are any other noteworthy matches and if so whether they follow any particular pattern. He also asks whether some of the law firms that have been organizing task forces to recruit and represent plaintiffs in the Madoff scandals — they include the Milberg firm and Wolf Haldenstein — have adequately disclosed to potential clients in their literature that their firms’ own names figure on the Madoff victims list. More: Gary Weiss, Larry Ribstein.

Further: Yet more views. And in comments, a visitor says Wolf Haldenstein is on the list because clients of the firm invested with Madoff, not because the firm itself did.

Tags: accounting, Bernard Madoff, David Bershad, Milberg Weiss, scandals, securities litigation

August 19 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:05:59 +0000

Two topics of recent interest on the site — cremation and service monkeys — together in one post [The Urn Garden]
Please don’t tell us an aggressive stance by music copyright holders is going to kill Pandora radio, one of the bright stars of the Internet [WaPo, more]
“Citizens in Chains: The High Cost of Prisoner Lawsuits to California Taxpayers” [CALA, PDF]
Navajo plaintiffs: spraying artificial snow on our sacred mountain is spiritually injurious [Volokh]
Remember those anti-poverty non-profit groups that were going to represent the culmination of John Edwards’ life work, aside from running for you-know-what? Him neither [Silverstein, Harper's via Folo]
Toxic tort class action in Saudi Arabia proves unsuccessful [Arab News]
Fending off patent trolls has been expensive for high-tech Massachusetts firm Cognex [NLJ]
Arizona law professor’s creative denials in paternity suit have furnished faculty-lounge chuckles for years [Caron/TaxProf, Jack J. Rappeport]
New at Point of Law: big ruckus over proposal to compel accounting projections of lawsuit exposure; guestblogger Peggy Little on Connecticut vs. Countrywide, the ABA in judicial selection and more; cy pres litigation slush funds assailed as constitutionally dubious; Trial Lawyers Inc. series tackles the state of Ohio; MBIA mulls suing hedge fund that’s sniped at its stock; more on med-mal “loss of a chance”; and much more.

Tags: accounting, Arizona, copyright, Countrywide, cy pres, Indian tribes, John Edwards, law schools, music and musicians, Ohio, patent trolls, prisoners, Saudi Arabia

Litigation accounting disclosures

Walter Olson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:49:58 +0000

There’s a fairly big controversy under way about a proposed FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) standard that would require public companies to provide much wider disclosures of where, how and by whom they are being sued or might be sued in the future, and to attach dollar signs to the possible exposures. I’ve got a write-up at Point of Law.

Tags: accounting

June 29 roundup

Ted Frank — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:48:34 +0000

New FASB regulation may provide fodder for trial lawyers: publicly disclose your internal analysis of liability (thus giving away crucial settlement information and attracting more lawsuits), and/or face lawsuits when your disclosure turns out to be incorrect. [CFO.com; CFO.com; NLJ/law.com ($); FASB RFC]
NBC settles a “You-made-me-commit-suicide-by-exposing-my-pedophilia” lawsuit. [LA Times; WSJ Law Blog; Conradt v. NBC Universal]
A victim of overwarning? 17-year-old loses hat on Six Flags Batman roller-coaster ride, ignores multiple warning signs to jump multiple fences into unauthorized area, retrieves hat, loses head. [FoxNews/AP; Atlanta Journal-Constitution; TortsProf]
Lots of Ninth Circuit reversals this term, as per usual. [The Recorder/law.com]
A no-Twinkie defense doesn’t fly in a maid-beating case. [CNN/AP via ATL]
The Chinese government demonstrates that it can enforce laws against IP piracy when it wants to [Marginal Revolution]
“Justice Scalia said he thought that the United States was ‘over-lawed,’ leading to too many lawyers in the country. ‘I don’t think our legal system should be that complex. I think that any system that requires that many of the country’s best minds, and they are the best minds, is too complex. If you look at the figures, where does the top of the class in college go to? It goes into law. They don’t go into teaching. Now I love the law, there is nothing I would rather do but it doesn’t produce anything.’” [Telegraph]
Above the Law commenters decidedly unimpressed by my looks. Looking forward to feminists rushing to my defense against “silencing insults.” [Above the Law]

Tags: accounting, defense lawyers, media, Ninth Circuit, overwarning, sued if you do, suicide, Supreme Court, trademarks

Overlawyered » accounting

“FASB Disclosure Proposal: Back To The Drawing Board”

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