This NY Times article provides an excellent analysis of the prospects for recovery of Kentucky Derby champion Barbaro, who suffered a career-ending leg injury during the early stages of the Preakness Stakes this past Saturday afternoon.
The bottom line — this beautiful animal has only about a 50-50 chance of recovering from the injury.
As predicted here almost two years ago, New York-based Weil, Gotshal & Manges settled during the latter stages of an ongoing trial the malpractice claims levied against the firm by the owners of a small New Jersey based retail clothing outlet, according to this Law.com ($) article. The colorful case — which was prompted by Weil Gotshal suing their former clients for $2.7 million in fees — was the subject of this earlier NY Sunday Times article.
Settlement terms were not disclosed as Weil Gotshal released a statement saying that it “settled despite its confidence in the trial outcome to avoid the cost of what would have been an inevitably long appeals process.”
The indefatigable Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and editor of the popular blawgs Overlawyered.com and PointOfLaw.com, chimes in today with this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed that provides a fine overview of the key issues raised by the Milberg Weiss indictment. Olson’s op-ed runs along side this WSJ ($) editorial that also comments on the Milberg Weiss indictment.
In reviewing the issues raised by the indictment, Olson notes the irony of Milberg Weiss being indicted for allegedly paying illegal kickbacks when Milberg Weiss has profited from making similar accusations in a large number of its class action securities fraud cases over the years:
Milberg Weiss lawyers have been in the forefront of efforts to define kickbacks broadly and punish them with rigor. The firm’s Web site boasts that it “has sued major providers of private mortgage insurance for kickback violations, resulting in substantial settlements.” Melvyn Weiss and others at the firm have expressed indignation at, and filed lawsuits over, alleged kickbacks in the contexts of Wall Street initial public offerings, mutual fund sales, insurance brokerage commissions and doctors’ prescribing of pharmaceuticals.
Meanwhile, although no great fan of many of the class action securities fraud lawsuits that Milberg Weiss has pursued, Larry Ribstein remains troubled by the indictment:
We (and I) may not like Milbergís business. But the class action part of it was one enabled by legal rules. The right way to deal with the problems of this business is to change the rules, as Iíve argued for securities class actions in my Fraud on a Noisy Market. When we criminally condemn firms like Milberg because we don’t like their business, we set a precedent for other firms in controversial lines of work — e.g., Drexel Burnham.
More seriously, the power to criminalize a firm puts a potent tool in the governmentís hands to get the firm to cooperate in sacrificing the rights of criminal defendants. Here the cure seems patently worse the disease. The questions are no less in Milberg than in KPMG just because Milberg was in an unpopular line of work.
Almost ignored amidst the media’s unprecedented focus on the Lay-Skilling trial, the first re-trial in the Enron Broadband case will go to the jury today after the prosecution and defense attorneys complete their closing arguments, which are expected to last most of the day. The trial is taking place in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore in Houston’s federal courthouse just down the hall from where the Lay-Skilling jurors resume deliberations this morning.
As noted earlier, the defendants in this first re-trial are Kevin Howard, the former Enron Broadband (“EBS”) CFO, and Michael Krautz, the former EBS senior accounting director, who are being tried together on four counts alleging that they conspired to commit wire fraud and falsify books and records in connection with a sale of video-on-demand profits. The charges relate to a April 2000 structured finance transaction known as Project Braveheart that was designed to allow EBS to monetize a 20-year agreement with Blockbuster Inc. EBS’ agreement with Blockbuster provided that Blockbuster would obtain digital rights to films that EBS would encode and stream over its network to customers’ homes.
The government contends that Howard and Krautz understood the accounting rules relating to the structured finance transaction, but that they intentionally violated those rules and withheld key information from Enron’s auditors so that the Braveheart transaction could be booked and allow Enron to post about $110 million in revenue in 2000-01. Howard and Krautz assert that the sale was an entirely legal and creative structured finance transaction that allowed EBS to generate earnings in an industry that was undergoing a deep shakeout amidst intense competition and fast-changing technology.
As noted earlier here, the Enron Broadband case is a part of a troubling trend in the post-Enron era in which individuals involved in legitimate structured finance transactions are targeted for indictment and prosecution, resulting in yet another disincentive for those individuals and their companies to engage in innovative risk-taking that generates wealth and jobs.