Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘ethics’

Geoffrey Fieger update

You will recall that Geoffrey Fieger’s modus operandi is to engage in outrageous behavior to get judges thrown off of cases and otherwise accuse judges who rule against him or his clients of misconduct (Nov. 20; Mar. 24). Now, in the aftermath of Hollins v. Jordan (Nov. 20 and links therein), Fieger is attacking an Ohio probate court judge who is daring to try to protect the settlement of the brain-damaged and legally incompetent plaintiff from Fieger’s machinations.

“This is all about intimidation,” [Judge] Corrigan said. He accused the plaintiffs’ out-of-town lawyers of “forum-shopping” to take the case away from him and give it to a Michigan judge more acquiescent to their wishes.

(James F. McCarty, “$30 million verdict spawns new legal battle”, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Oct. 9). This dispute is over a $1.5 million pretrial settlement with another defendant; the $30 million verdict is also on appeal.

Back in Michigan, Fieger is offering to spend millions of dollars of his own money to run for Michigan Attorney General on the Democratic ticket. (Steven Harmon, “Fieger ready to pour own cash into attorney general fight”, Grand Rapids Press, Oct. 21). Fortunately for the Democratic Party, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for the idea. (Kathleen Gray, “Fieger considers running for state attorney general”, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 12). John Engler easily beat Fieger, 62 percent to 38 percent, when Fieger ran for governor in 1998.

The targeting of the incumbent attorney general, Mike Cox, may be related to “an ongoing criminal investigation of a complaint from Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land about alleged filing irregularities on $400,000 of Fieger-financed spending opposing the successful 2004 re-election of Republican Michigan Supreme Court Justice Stephen Markman.” (George Weeks, “Fieger isn’t faking bid for attorney general”, Detroit News, Oct. 13). Fieger has demonstrated his misunderstanding of principles of federal jurisdiction with a federal lawsuit against Cox and Land in an attempt to squelch the campaign finance investigation. (AP, Oct. 13).

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A war story

On Evan Schaeffer’s blog, the pseudonymous junior associate “Stan Stankowski” tells a ribald tale (which may or may not be true or exaggerated) of dealing with a foul-mouthed plaintiff’s attorney who demonstrates that it’s not just defense attorneys who can be obstructionist.

Read On…

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“Trailblazing Anti-Tobacco Litigator Agrees to Disbarment”

No need for a public accounting dept.:

In a rare case of thievery at a large New Jersey firm, tobacco litigation pioneer Alan Darnell admitted that he misappropriated money from his partners and clients at Woodbridge’s Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer and has volunteered for disbarment.

The reporter’s description of thievery in Garden State legal circles as “rare”, in case you were wondering, turns out to mean it’s not often the lawyers are caught misappropriating their own partners’ or clients’ funds in prohibited ways.

By bowing out of the profession before the investigation was complete, Darnell saved himself and 140-lawyer Wilentz Goldman from a public airing of the details of what money he took, whom he took it from and what he did with it.

Oh, well then that’s okay. Mustn’t risk giving the general public a peek at such matters, after all.

Darnell, who was known for filing asbestos and pharmaceutical claims, “was a leading member of the Wilentz Goldman team that represented plaintiffs in mass tort and product liability cases. …Big tobacco was his biggest target.” Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer is perhaps the state’s best-known plaintiff’s firm (one of its ads) and is also renowned for its political connections, which have brought it much lucrative state business.

The state’s Office of Attorney Ethics will also be sealing the records of its investigation of Darnell, and it doesn’t appear that there are further legal proceedings against him in the offing. Remember this story next time lawyers denounce the alleged conspiracy of silence regarding doctors’ misconduct (Henry Gottlieb, New Jersey Law Journal, Oct. 6).

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Planning litigation fraud at Best Buy

Craig Newmark pointed me to this post exploring how Best Buy’s poorly-structured sales incentives allegedly permits a clever customer to negotiate for an HDTV below cost. But what really fascinated me was the first comment to the post (creative capitalization and spelling as in original):

If you are daring and want an easy $7,000, just act REALLY suspicous, and once you got everyone in the store asking if they can help you and the Loss Prevention guy up front staring at you, walk out the door. If they stop you, get everyones info who was involved in the stop. MAKE SURE YOU LET THEM KNOW YOU WERE EMBARRASED!!

Call a lawyer (this may cost you a few bucks). One letter or phone call to the district loss prevention manager will result in them settling, which in my experience has always been $7000.

We covered similar shakedowns Mar. 1 and Jul. 12.

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Update: feds to retry Miss. corruption case

Some things even the hurricane isn’t going to stop: “The federal government announced Friday that it will retry Coast attorney Paul Minor and two former judges he is accused of bribing.” (Geoff Pender, “Government to retry judicial bribery case”, Biloxi Sun-Herald, Sept. 16; Jimmie E. Gates and Jerry Mitchell, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 17). See Aug. 15, Aug. 12, etc.

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Don’ts

More misconduct by lawyers which resulted in sanctions or other consequences, as reported on Law.com in August: Don’t seize on a typographical error made by your opponent as an excuse to ship documents to yourself and then argue that you complied with a subpoena (Glendale, Calif. lawyer Geoffrey Mousseau, hit with more than $12,000 in sanctions which were upheld on appeal)(Mike McKee, “Lawyer Sanctioned After Placing a Bad Bet on a Typo”, The Recorder, Aug. 24). Don’t keep filing lawsuits based on theories that the Third Circuit has previously rejected in your own cases (H. Francis deLone Jr. of Wayne, Pa., hit with federal Rule 11 sanctions arising from a civil rights suit he filed on behalf of a transit worker fired for testing positive for cocaine)(Shannon P. Duffy, “Lawyer Sanctioned — Again — for Losing Theory”, The Legal Intelligencer, Aug. 17). More don’ts: Aug. 3.

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Teacher’s pet barracuda

Via Lyle Roberts at 10b-5 Daily (Aug. 29), we learn of the latest advance in methods guaranteed to bring us a more ruthless legal profession: “Christopher Waddell, general counsel of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, said that he uses both bounty and sliding-scale fees in order to ‘incentivize’ his outside counsel to go after personal assets. CalSTRS, the nation’s third-largest public pension fund, has promised its lawyers a 2.5 percent bounty, plus an undisclosed fee, in a pending suit against the former directors of WorldCom.” (Sue Reisinger, “Securities Fraud: Attorneys Are Receiving Bounties for Pursuing Officers and Directors”, Corporate Counsel, Aug. 24). For the reasons most other countries’ legal systems consider contingency fees for lawyers to be unethical, see Chapter 2 (“A Piece of the Action”) of The Litigation Explosion (PDF).

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Update: “Maris family, Anheuser-Busch settle lawsuit”

The beer giant agreed to pay at least $120 million in a confidential settlement to settle a defamation suit and other litigation arising from its termination of a beer distributorship held by the family of baseball great Roger Maris. (AP/Orlando Sentinel, Aug. 24; Tiffany Pakkala, “Maris deal taps Busch for $120m”, Gainesville Sun, Aug. 25). The dispute took the form of several distinct legal actions; in 2001 a Gainesville, Fla. jury awarded the Maris family $50 million following a three-month trial at which celebrated attorney Willie Gary, representing the family, was charged with repeated misconduct (see Apr. 1-2, 2002). However, a judge later threw out ethics charges against Gary (Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, 2004). In the latest round, Gary was again representing the family, this time in a defamation suit against the brewing company; a jury was preparing to return its verdict when the parties settled. (Gregory Cancelada, “Maris family, Anheuser-Busch square off in defamation suit”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch/San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 22).

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Update: Indictments in Roberts sex/extortion case

We reported June 13, 2004:

According to a story in the San Antonio Express-News, husband-and-wife legal partners Ted H. and Mary Schorlemer Roberts received money in a curious sequence of events. Mary, claiming to seek “no strings” discreet encounters, would seduce men over an Internet dating service. Ted would then write the men (in legal documents sometimes typed by Mary) and notify them that he planned to seek intrusive and public civil discovery to investigate whether the affair brought forward potential causes of action that were flimsy at best; the men would pay tens of thousands of dollars for a release and confidentiality agreement.

The Roberts couple’s bankruptcy trustee has since sued the Express-News over the story, on the theory that it “invaded their privacy, inflicted emotional distress and drove them into bankruptcy.” But a Texas grand jury has voted to indict the two on three charges of “theft” (which, in Texas, encompasses extortion); the FBI decided that federal charges weren’t possible. The Roberts couple’s attorney predicts they’ll be exonerated. “You can rest assured that I believe that lawyers are held to the same standards as everyone else in the community,” Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed said. “The law doesn’t carve out the word ‘lawyer'” for special protection.” (Maro Robbins and Joseph S. Stroud, “Pair facing extortion indictment”, San Antonio Express-News, Sep. 1). The story does not detail what happened to the Roberts’ former partner, Robert V. West III, who originally brought the allegations to light; in return, the Roberts sued him and the Texas bar chose to investigate West rather than the Roberts.

The old Curmudgeonly Clerk weblog explored the legal legitimacy of the underlying Roberts lawsuits back in 2004.

In the original story, the newspaper asked Texas law professor and legal ethics specialist John Dzienkowski if legal ethics prohibited the Roberts’ tactics. “In the spectrum of Rambo litigation, and in the spectrum of trying to push people a little bit, just sending that piece of paper is probably on the mild side,” said Dzienkowski. “That’s why ethically I don’t really see a problem with it.” But who says reform of the legal profession is needed?

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A Boies cookie jar

Famed attorney David Boies “champions himself as an advocate of honest corporate governance,” notes Tom Kirkendall (Aug. 31), so it’s more than a little piquant that Boies “just resigned as special counsel for Adelphia for violating the Bankruptcy Code and Rules by failing to disclose to the Adelphia Bankruptcy Court that members of his family indirectly own a substantial interest in a document management services company that did between $5 and $10 million of business with Adelphia. Apparently, other clients of Mr. Boies’ firm also have paid substantial sums to the document management company without knowing of the affiliation to Mr. Boies’ family members.” Larry Ribstein also comments (Aug. 30) and notes (Aug. 31) that the W$J story that broke the news “also notes that a former Boies associate, [William F.] Duker, who headed the firm [document management firm Amici] was sentenced to 33 months in prison in 1997 for ‘falsely inflating legal bills to the federal government.’ (Ironically, the same person helped Boies sue Mike Milken in 1990.) The current Amici CEO, ‘when asked if Mr. Duker had a consulting contract or office at the company this year’ said ‘I don’t know how to describe that relationship.’ Wonder if Boies’ clients knew about that when they approved use of Amici.” (Laurie P. Cohen and Robert Frank, “More Boies Clients Used Family Firm”, Aug. 31). Update: Larry Ribstein has more (Sept. 12).

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