Martha Graybow of Reuters recently reported on Republican lawmakers who have demanded Congress hold a hearing on a legal industry scandal involving well-known plaintiffs' lawyers who admitted paying secret kickbacks to clients in corporate fraud lawsuits.  It is a perfect example of how Big Lawyer is hurting our nation and costing all of us money.

For those of you who were not paying attention to a few of the biggest legal stories of the year, a long-running federal probe has exposed the vile greed of the most successful class action lawyers in the land and led to the guilty pleas of attorneys Melvyn Weiss and William Lerach and other former lawyers at law firm Milberg LLP.  Weiss and Lerach became famous and fantastically wealthy making money from bringing shareholder lawsuits against large corporations, drawing scorn from pro-business advocates who said the cases were frivolous and a big distraction to companies. 

Guess what?  Those advocates were pretty much right. It turned out Weiss was paying witnesses off and breaking the law regularly to win cases and get rich, the results of which destroyed businesses and the lives of many people that were a part of them.

It always amazes me how people on the left ignore their own double standards – while we hear ranting against Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, we never hear about Big Union or Big Trial Bar.  (And I have to say the last time I took an aspirin and felt better I liked Big Pharma.)  A friend who is an attorney recently noted how she felt sorry for Weiss’ kids, who have been teased at school since the news of their father’s crimes made national news.  She wanted the authorities to take it easier on Weiss – maybe she should ask the folks whose lives were hurt when the company they worked for closed because of a bogus lawsuit filed by Milberg Wiess and their fellow criminals what they think.  By the way, she is a lawyer.

The Milberg scandal should be further investigated by the House Judiciary Committee to determine the extent of illegal payments to plaintiffs as initiated by House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the committee

 "The Republican-led Congress responded aggressively to the Enron and WorldCom scandals earlier this decade," the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee. "Now the Democrat-led Congress needs to do its job and examine the scandal at Milberg Weiss, which potentially has deeper and more far-reaching implications."

Weiss, the New York-based firm's co-founder, admitted to participating in the kickbacks scheme. He pleaded guilty on April 2 to racketeering and faces as much as 33 months in prison when he is sentenced.  Lerach, best known for winning billions in legal settlements for Enron investors, was sentenced in February to two years in prison. He left Milberg in 2004 to form his own San Diego-based law practice and has now retired from that firm. The Milberg firm has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges and is scheduled to go on trial in August.  Prosecutors said Weiss, Lerach and other defendants sought out clients with large stock portfolios, asking them to serve as plaintiffs when negative information surfaced about a company and then paying them a portion of the firm's legal fees without the knowledge of judges overseeing the cases.

Boehner and Smith said that Lerach was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that the kickback payments were an "industry practice." Should such activity be widespread, then Congress has an obligation to take action, they wrote.  But while nearly three months have passed since Lerach was sentenced, Congress has yet to conduct even a single hearing to determine the extent to which crimes such as his are occurring in the rest of the industry.  

The Republicans are demanding a hearing by May 19.

Right – we are talking about the worst, do nothing, most condescending, totally complacent Congress in our nation’s history, currently held in the lowest esteem by the public since they started keeping track.

Good luck fellows.