Talk about justice.

LAT reports today that prosecutors are working on a case that Milberg Weiss improperly paid plaintiffs to file suits against publicly traded companies.

Too bad the government can’t resort to the same type of extortion tactics that Milberg Weiss employed against so many companies. Then, like Milberg Weiss, the government could dispense with all of the evidence gathering and presumed innocence and cut right to negotiating how much it’s going to cost Milberg Weiss to make this go away.

At one point Milberg Weiss accounted for 85% of all such class action law suits filed in California and 60% elsewhere in 2001. In fact, the firm became so proficient at legal extortion that the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act was drafted with them in mind. It should also be noted that during this period of peak lawsuit abuse the firm was a major donor of former Calif. Governor Gray Davis.

The 66-page indictment, which also names Palm Springs lawyer Paul T. Selzer as a defendant, describes a scheme in which Lazar or one of his family members agreed to serve as lead plaintiff for a share of the attorney fees. The indictment said Lazar collected at least $2.4 million in “secret and illegal kickback payments” from the law firm through Selzer and others.

I’d love to see the government RICO these clowns the way that they do other extortionists. Legal reform, one step at a time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 25th, 2005 at 9:00 am by Insider and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.