Daily Archives: June 5, 2007

The importance of the images of war

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iraq%20war%20dead.jpgFollowing on recent posts here and here on the seemingly intractable problems in Iraq, this David Carr/NY Times op-ed comments on the efforts of the U.S. military to control the publication of images of injured or killed soldiers from the Iraq War. Carr’s op-ed prompted this letter to the Times editor by University of Houston Professor Bill Monroe, who you may recall had the best line at the Memorial Service for the late Ross M. Lence. Professor Monroe’s letter provides as follows:

To the Editor:
ìNot to See the Fallen Is No Favor,î by David Carr (The Media Equation, May 28), suggests that the reigning assumption among leaders in Iraq is that we canít handle the truth. In a curious way, it may well be the duty of fallen soldiers to let us see them ó wounded, dying and dead.
If we have the temerity to ask them to risk life and limb protecting American interests, we must ask them to help us know what it looks like, what it feels like, so that we can decide, as a Republic and a people, whether we in fact want to exact that private and public cost.
ìIt is well,î Robert E. Lee is reported to have said, ìthat war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.î
We canít handle the truth? We had better.
William Monroe
Houston, May 30, 2007

Milberg Weiss on the Brink

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The longstanding criminal investigation and finally the indictment of the class action plaintiffs’ firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman has been a common topic on this blog, so it has been with interest that I have been following the WSJ’s Nathan Koppel, Peter Lattman and Ashby Jones’ excellent coverage (see here and here) over the past week of the plea deal rumblings for the firm and at least one of the prominent attorneys ensnared in the prosecution. In short, David Bershad is supposedly negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors that reportedly could have a domino effect on several current and former partners of the firm, including Mel Weiss and Bill Lerach.

Inasmuch as the plaintiffs’ class action securities fraud bar tends to be a lightning rod for criticism regarding vexatious, costly and unproductive litigation, there hasn’t been much public support for Milberg Weiss and the individuals involved in this episode.

But as Larry Ribstein points out in this wise post, the Milberg Weiss criminal case is not only thick with ironies and contradictions, the issues involved in the case are not easy to sort out.

Encouraging the government to use its overwhelming prosecutorial power as the default regulatory tool to deal with the unpopular businesspersons or business lawyers of the moment is not as neat and tidy as it may seem on the surface, despite what this narrow-minded WSJ ($) editorial suggests.

Texas’ medical licensing logjam

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texas_doctors_comp.jpgThe number of insurance companies offering medical malpractice insurance policies has dramatically increased and malpractice insurance premiums have substantially decreased since the 2003 legislation enacting medical malpractice caps in Texas, but the med mal caps have contributed to at least one unanticipated problem:

. . . about 2,250 license applications await processing at the Texas Medical Board in Austin. The wait could be as long as a year for some of the more experienced doctors because it takes longer to review their records.
The fear is that some doctors will give up on Texas and go elsewhere instead of waiting. A $1.22 million emergency funding request was approved during the last days of Texas legislative session for the Texas Medical Board, which licenses physicians. That is on top of the $18.3 million regular biennial appropriation, said Jane McFarland, the board’s chief of staff.
The board plans to add nine new employees to its 139-member staff, seven of which will help chop away at the backlog of license applications.