November 07, 2006

Peter Elkind, known for his writing on Enron, turns his journalism on "The fall of America's meanest law firm," Milberg Weiss, in the Nov. 3 issue of Fortune magazine.

Anthony Sebok's Findlaw column discusses the Milberg Weiss indictment and the Fortune article, though perhaps cuts the firm too much slack; for example, it's certainly not the case that "critics had no real concrete gripe to voice against the firm - until the indictment." The Oxford Health litigation that Sebok singles out reflects parasitic free-riding off of SEC efforts unnecessary to vindicate real shareholder interests; and when such free-riding wasn't occurring, it was because Milberg Weiss was often suing over legitimate drops in stock price and using the threat of litigation to extort settlements, again to the detriment of shareholders. For this, the firm received over a billion dollars of shareholder money in the course of its securities litigating.