The Money Lawyers

Money Lawyers.jpgBruce Carton over at the Securities Litigation Watch blog is excerpting portions of Joseph C. Goulden’s new book called The Money Lawyers (Truman Talley 1995), and the first excerpt is a portion of the chapter in the book about controversial class action plaintiffs’ lawyer, William Lerach. Goulden notes that Lerach disarmed him about Lerach’s legendary reputation for combative behavior in their first meeting:

Stories of the [Lerach] temper are legion. An unfriendly adversary told me he once heard Lerach tell corporate executives during negotiations, “I don’t give a f**k if I put your company into bankruptcy. I’m going to take away your beach house and your condo in Aspen by the time I’m finished with you.” When he talks about high tech executives, he tosses around vitriol such as “scumbags” and “crime in the suites.” He can be combative when dealing with other lawyers. One remembers hearing Lerach storm, “Your professional life is at an end. I am going to destroy you.”
But he chose to open our talk with a grin. “So,” he said, “some of those guys are saying nasty things about me, eh?”

UT football’s newest recruiting tool

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“Recruits, click on the picture. You could have one of these if you come to UT.”

The power-law theory of homelessness

homeless2.jpgMalcolm Gladwell, he of Tipping Point fame, has authored this fascinating New Yorker article on homelessness, which includes a particularly interesting discussion of the health care costs for the chronically homeless. One example that Gladwell uses is the story of a Reno, Nevada homeless man nicknamed “Million Dollar Murray,” who — when all his health care and substance-abuse treatment costs were calculated for the ten years that he had been on the streets — probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada. As one sage Reno cop observed: ìIt cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray.î
The entire article is a must read, and here is a snippet to give you a flavor for it:

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Have you noticed what’s happening with oil prices?

oreillyconfused.jpgHave you noticed that crude oil prices have declined by 12% this month?
Crude-oil futures dropped $2 on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday, falling to the lowest level in two months. Benchmark light, sweet crude-oil futures for March fell $1.92 to settle at $57.65 a barrel, which is the lowest front-month settlement since Dec. 19th. That makes four straight days of losses amounting to almost $5 a barrel. Meanwhile, government data reflects that U.S. petroleum inventories are above the higher end of the average range for this time of year, and oil stockpiles are now at their highest level since late June, 2005.
No word yet from Bill O’Reilly on how the big oil companies, with all their market power, could not prevent this large decline in crude oil prices.