Posts Tagged ‘Melvyn Weiss’

Banking and finance roundup

  • D.C. Circuit’s en banc decision upholding constitutionality of CFPB disappointing but not surprising. On to SCOTUS [Ilya Shapiro, Aaron Nielson, Jonathan Adler]
  • Big thinking under way at the SEC could replace securities class action sector with free contract: “The SEC should authorize mandatory arbitration of shareholder class action lawsuits” [Bainbridge, Benjamin Bain/Bloomberg News (noting that broker dealers have long been free to use arbitration clauses)]
  • Milberg Weiss founder Melvyn Weiss dies at 82 [ABA Journal, our coverage over the years of Weiss and his firm, @PaulHorwitz (“Give generously, and to the right people, so that your NYT obit can be a glowing apologia despite a few inconvenient facts.”)]
  • Here come the shareholder derivative suits over sleazy-boss #MeToo scandals [Kevin LaCroix] “NERA: 2017 Securities Suits Filed at ‘Record Pace'” [same]
  • Rogoff rebuttals: “More Evidence of the High Collateral Damage of a War on Cash” [Lawrence White, Cato, earlier] “Money as coined liberty” [David R. Henderson]
  • Quotas/targets for percentages of women, disabled and indigenous persons on Canadian corporate boards? [Terence Corcoran/Financial Post, more]

May 14 roundup

“Melvyn Weiss’ Quest For Redemption”

Now released from prison, the former class-action baron “declined to say whether he regretted his actions.” Weiss — once acclaimed as the plaintiff’s bar’s top spotter of financial fraud — also turns out to have lost a ton of money to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The report is balanced, and cites Michael Perino’s work finding evidence that Weiss’s lies to judges worked to his own benefit as opposed to that of class members. It also recalls the heated claims by Democratic U.S. Reps. Charles Rangel, Gary Ackerman, Carolyn Maloney and Robert Wexler that Weiss was being railroaded on political charges — before he admitted the scheme and pleaded guilty, that is. [Jewish Week]

The Milberg Weiss Four after prison

All four have completed their sentences and don’t seem to have it so bad, judging by a March 19 Bloomberg story. William Lerach is going to teach at a law school and work for a “progressive think-tank.” And for the Milberg law firm itself? “Over the past couple of years, while everybody has been laying off lawyers and cutting pay, we’ve been giving lawyers raises and extra bonuses.”

October 10 roundup

Milberg hires judge who ruled in its favor

Last year New York trial judge Herman Cahn ruled in favor of class-action giant Milberg in a high-profile dispute over whether it could share its winnings from past cases with disgraced felon and former name partner Melvyn Weiss, the firm’s former driving force. Judge Cahn stepped down from the New York bench in December, and now it develops has been hired by Milberg as its “distinguished” new attorney. And you — with the Wall Street Journal’s editorialists today — certainly have a suspicious mind. There probably won’t be any shortage of funds with which to pay the former jurist: an American Lawyer headline last month read “Milberg Among Plaintiffs Firms Awarded $120 Million in Xerox Class Action”.

Mel Weiss invested with Madoff

American Lawyer has the story (more: AmLaw Daily, ABA Journal). Because, if you asked why the former dean of the shareholder class-action plaintiff’s bar deserved those hundreds of millions in court-ordered fees, you would have been told that society needed to reward his unsurpassed skills at sniffing out securities fraud. Can you imagine how Weiss as a lawyer would have shredded some hapless middleman financial defendant who thought it wasn’t necessary to do due diligence on an investment manager in placing funds because, well, he seemed like a nice guy at the time?

Weiss is in jail now on unrelated charges, of course, but he might make a fun person to name as lead plaintiff in a suit against Madoff.

Microblog 2008-12-19

  • Newest “Trial Lawyers Inc.” report is on Louisiana [Manhattan Institute, Point of Law]
  • Mel Weiss disbarred automatically w/strong language from judges [Matter of Weiss h/t @erwiest]
  • Pro se claimant: I wrote down cure for cancer and then the darn hospital stole it! [Above the Law]
  • “California Supreme Court Ruling May Deter Good Samaritans” [The Recorder; SF Chronicle with copious reader comments, GruntDoc, our coverage last year]
  • Due diligence on dodgy funds? Sometimes it seems everyone’s relying on someone else to do that [Bronte Capital] Madoff fraud may date to 1970s, maybe “recent laxity” angle has been overdone [Securities Docket] “Ponzi crawl” = pub crawl whereby new person is added at each location and has to buy a round [Re Risk]
  • Radley Balko on Julie Amero malware-prosecution story [Reason, earlier]
  • Join Paul Ehrlich in some of the world’s most famously refuted predictions, and you too may get to be Obama’s science adviser [John Tierney/NYT, John Holdren]
  • Wisconsin Minnesota pig-sitter trial set for March, claim is that defendant let star porker overfeed and gain a hundred pounds [LaCrosse Tribune h/t @kevinokeefe]
  • More on the Patent and Trademark Office “acceptable error” employment case [Venture Chronicles, Jeff Nolan; earlier]
  • Procter & Gamble “Satanism” case finally settles, soap giant got $19 million verdict against four Amway distributors who spread rumor [OnPoint News]
  • Once filing of a suit severs the channels of communication, attorneys and clients alike begin to make up “what really happened” narratives [Settle It Now]
  • Sometimes lawyers need to be formal. Don’t IM “Court denied your appeal u will b executed saturday thx” [Beck & Herrmann]
  • Bangladesh hoping to build replica of Taj Mahal despite copyright claims [Times Online h/t @mglickman]
  • Midnight regulations? “OMB Watch” vigilant (and with reason) during this R-2-D transition but sang different tune in 2000’s D-2-R [Gillespie, Reason]