Class action securities powerhouse Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman has been attempting to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of the Justice Department’s decision to go Arthur Andersen on the firm earlier this year (previous posts here), but this New York Observer article (related NY Times article here) reports that the firm’s demise is imminent, well before the criminal trial of the firm:
A lawyer for a competing firm, who asked to remain anonymous, said that he had interviewed several Milberg Weiss employees seeking a position with his firm.
He said they have the same sense of the mood at the firm.
ìThat itís sad, itís a sinking ship, itís like a funeral home. Itís extremely upsetting,î he said. ìItís like waiting for them to turn out the lights and close the door; theyíre running for the exits.î
Published reports have documented the departure of about two dozen attorneys since the indictments were handed down. Thatís a lot in a firm of 125 lawyers.
And of the offices once listed on the companyís Web siteóLos Angeles; Boca Raton, Fla.; and Manhattanóonly the New York and California branches remain.
The firm once employed close to 500 people, including paralegals, investigators, messengers, secretaries, forensic experts and lawyers. [ . . .]
The ìexperience with Arthur Andersen indicated that partnerships are fragile entities,î said [New York University law professor and Milberg Weiss advisor Samuel] Issacharoff. ìThatís the reality.î
The government’s prosecution of Milberg Weiss out of business will have nowhere near the economic impact that the government’s effective shuttering of Arthur Andersen had. And certainly a plaintiff’s firm is not the type of victim that elicits much sympathy. However, that does not make any less outrageous what the government is doing here — effectively killing the accused after investigating it for over five years and before it is determined whether it has committed a crime. That there is not more of an outcry over this injustice reflects a troubling deference that even the legal community is now giving to the abuse of the criminal justice system by federal prosecutors. As Sir Thomas More reminds us “do you really think you could stand upright in the winds [of abusive prosecutorial power] that would blow” if that power were applied to you?
Maybe this is the DOJ payback/penance for the “remarkable quiescence” of the business community for all the harm the DOJ’s politically motivated witchhunts against that community has caused? In any event, its ugly.
I am constantly amazed at how the public, even the well educated public, fails to question actions by our government. I wonder just how close to home the prosecutors will have to get before the public sees that they can “get” whomever they decide to get. We are past the infancy of prosecutorial abuse in white collar cases and well into the pre-school stage, and there seems to be no limit to what the public will allow. Criminal prosecutions should not be run like a civil trial where winning is the goal. Ideally, the TRUTH should be the endgame in a criminal prosecution. Unfortunately, many government prosecutors expose themselves as out of control egos who look forward to lucrative careers once they get on the front pages of newspapers. It is not a fair fight. They have all the money, all the resources and all the time in the world to go after whomever they please. So many of these prosecutions end on a weak obstruction or perjury conviction but the public can’t see past “guilty”.