Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘lawyers’

“Ex-Dewey Executives Charged in Fraud That Destroyed Firm”

Extraordinary allegations by the Manhattan District Attorney, as summarized by Bloomberg:

Three former executives at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, once the No. 3 legal adviser to banks handling merger deals, were charged with a “blatant” $200 million fraud that spurred the largest law firm bankruptcy in history.

The three, including the chairman, executive director and chief financial officer, were accused of using accounting gimmicks similar to those that sent top executives at WorldCom Inc. and Tyco International Ltd. to prison a decade ago. Authorities cited e-mails in which the men referred to “fake income,” “cooking the books” and “accounting tricks.”

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“Report: Document shows surveillance of US law firm”

“The National Security Agency was involved in the surveillance of an American law firm while it represented a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States, The New York Times reported in a story based on a top-secret document obtained by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden.” [AP] This would be big news if true: the way it works is that lawyers are supposed to mess with your privacy, not the other way around. However, writes Orin Kerr, “the story ends up delivering considerably less than it promises.” [Volokh]

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Downfall of a California police-union law firm

Last year we linked a report about a series of unfortunate events that kept happening to elected officials in Costa Mesa, Calif. after they resisted negotiating demands from the city’s police union. One saw his supporters’ businesses harassed by cops, while another was picked up on a bogus DUI charge phoned in by a private eye with ties to an Upland, Calif. law firm, Lackie, Dammeier, McGill, and Ethir, known for extremely aggressive representation of police unions around California.

Now the Lackie, Dammeier firm is in turmoil following a raid on its offices by the Orange County District Attorney’s office. Former Costa Mesa councilman Jim Righeimer, target of the bogus DUI report, and council colleague Steve Mensinger have also alleged in a lawsuit that the law firm’s private investigator attached a GPS device to Mensinger’s car. Lawyers for the two believe the device allowed the investigator to trace the pair’s whereabouts to the bar, allowing for the called-in DUI report which failed when Righeimer produced evidence he had consumed only a couple of Diet Cokes. Mensinger “said the device was affixed to his car during the entire 2012 election season and came to his attention only when he was alerted by the Orange County district attorney’s office.” [L.A. Times, more] The Orange County Register reported: “Mensinger and Righeimer are strong supporters of reforming public pensions and privatizing some city services. … Besides Mensinger, [investigator Chris] Lanzillo is also suspected of following former El Monte City Manager Rene Bobadilla to his home in June 2011, according to a police report obtained by the Orange County Register.” And more recently: “Though they made no admissions, lawyers for the law firm and Lanzillo argued in court papers that placing a tracking device on Mensinger’s truck wouldn’t be an invasion of privacy.” The Costa Mesa police union, also named as a defendant, says in a separate filing that it wasn’t involved with any GPS-tracking plan. [Daily Pilot]

That’s not the only trouble facing the firm: “A statewide police defense fund is no longer sending [it cases] after a forensic audit uncovered triple-billing, bogus travel expenses and ‘serious acts of misconduct.'” [Orange County Register] According to press reports, the firm is in the course of dissolving.

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Update: $2.2 M verdict reinstated for client whose chair collapsed at law firm

Seeking help with an auto accident claim, Robert Friedrich was in a meeting with an attorney at a personal injury law firm in 2003 when a chair collapsed under him. He won a $2.2 million jury verdict against the law firm of Fetterman & Associates and a retailer that sold the chair, but an appeals court directed a verdict against him, finding a lack of needed causation. Now the Florida Supreme Court has reinstated the verdict [Legal Profession Prof, ABA Journal, earlier]

Perhaps the most remarkable passage in the ABA Journal’s coverage:

An expert for Friedrich said an inspection should have revealed the “weak joint” in the chair blamed for the collapse and said it should be standard procedure for businesses to test chairs every six months, the court recounts. An expert for the law firm said the only test for defects in chairs is to sit in them, and no other test would have revealed the defect that caused the Friedrich accident. …

A dissenting judge would have upheld the directed verdict against Friedrich. Even if the jury agreed that businesses should inspect chairs every six months, the dissenting judge said, there was insufficient evidence to prove that an inspection would have revealed the defect in the chair at issue.

Commenter DKJA at the ABA Journal writes:

So every business in Florida now has to “inspect” every piece of furniture every six months in perpetuity?

Maybe we should just replace all furniture with beanbag chairs. Although I’m sure someone would figure out how to injure themselves on one of them as well.

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Going to the press with an employment dispute = “retaliation”?

“Did the law firm [Ropes & Gray] retaliate against John Ray III by providing information about his Equal Employment Opportunity Commission race-discrimination complaint to the Above the Law blog?” That is among the questions a federal court in Boston will consider in a trial beginning next month. Specifically, the firm sent a copy of the EEOC’s determination letter in Ray’s case to the popular blog. Since no law bars “retaliation” by employees against employers, we might arrive at a situation in which an employee is free to try his case in the press, while an employer’s hands are tied against responding in kind. [ABA Journal; earlier]

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Alex Beam on Alan Dershowitz

The columnist has a priceless anecdote of a fact-checking query mistakenly left in a pre-publication book version sent out by Prof. Dershowitz’s publisher; also, why those who complain about being called celebrity lawyers should probably not call attention to lists of the famous people they’ve represented. [Boston Globe]

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“The Legal Field Attracts Psychopaths, Author Says”

“CEOs and lawyers are among the professions with the most psychopaths — evidence that psychopathic traits aren’t all bad, according to a new book by an Oxford research psychologist. … The [Washington] Post quotes one successful lawyer who spoke to [author Kevin] Dutton. ‘Deep inside me there’s a serial killer lurking somewhere,’ the lawyer says. ‘But I keep him amused with cocaine, Formula One, booty calls, and coruscating cross-examination.'” [ABA Journal, Smithsonian]

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