“Rothstein got top national rating for ethics”

Scott Rothstein, the Florida lawyer at the center of the biggest fraud investigation since, oh, Marc Dreier’s, got an “AV Preeminent” rating from Martindale-Hubbell, which says its ratings “serve as an objective indicator that a lawyer has the highest ethical standards and professional ability and are used by buyers of legal services to justify their hiring decision.” [Buddy Nevins, BrowardBeat via John Darer]

P.S. Related, from Worcester, Mass.: “‘Lawyer You Can Trust’ Gets Prison for Theft” [Ambrogi, Legal Blog Watch]

Filed under: ethics, Scott Rothstein

“Disgraced ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer to lecture at ethics center”

Life imitates The Onion: the madam in the Client Nine scandal is questioning the propriety of the invitation from Prof. Lawrence Lessig’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard. [NY Daily News] Spitzer, for those who’ve already forgotten, curried political favor with anti-libertarian feminist and legal services groups by helping lead a crusade to lengthen sentences for “johns”, then deftly dodged the harsh penalties that his own law has inflicted on many offenders less well connected than himself. Lately, by way of rehabilitating his image, he’s taken to the columns of publications like Slate to lecture the rest of us about things like respect for the rule of law. More: Above the Law, Greenfield (& welcome Chequer-Board readers).

Filed under: do as we say, Eliot Spitzer, ethics, Harvard

Judge: bankruptcy lawyer’s conduct “inexcusable”

“U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Joan Lloyd ruled Friday that attorney Bruce Atherton and [financier] Randall Scott Waldman ‘blatantly breached’ their duty to the owner of a Louisville tool machinery company by forcing him out of business and seizing his assets. …Atherton was suspended from practicing law last month by the Kentucky Supreme Court based on his guilty plea in September in Pennsylvania federal court to charges that he aided a scheme in which other defendants allegedly ‘busted out’ small businesses by pretending to buy them, then draining their assets before the deals were completed.” [Louisville Courier-Journal via ABA Journal]

Filed under: bankruptcy, ethics, Kentucky

Brooklyn: “Disbarred Attorney Pleads Guilty to Guardian Account Thefts”

“A former Brooklyn, N.Y., lawyer has pleaded guilty to fleecing millions of dollars from guardianship accounts he oversaw for incapacitated seniors and children. … at least 16 court examiners who oversaw Rondos [Steven T. Rondos] had signed off on his reports without detecting any red flags.” [NYLJ]

Filed under: ethics, NYC, wills and trusts

Houston: Hoeffner trial in fifth week

“Houston lawyer Warren Todd Hoeffner is accused of paying $3 million in cash, BMWs, trips, even spa treatments and ‘gentleman’s entertainment’” in a scheme to obtain $34 million in settlements in silicosis litigation. Things began to unravel when Hartford Insurance, which had cut settlements on behalf of a number of defendants, noticed the arrival of a check for $6,000 from Hoeffner to one of its former claims personnel. Hoeffner’s lawyers are arguing that the insurance company employees extorted money and goods from their client by threatening not to approve fair settlements otherwise. [Houston Chronicle, Southeast Texas Record]

Filed under: ethics, insurance, silicosis, Texas

If you’re not reading Point of Law

If you’re not following my other site, here’s some of what you’re missing:

Advance-fee fraud (“Nigerian 419”) scam emails that pose as international product-liability payouts;
Coverage of the recent Washington, D.C. developments on med-mal reform [Carter Wood and more];
The soil from which ACORN grew;
Judges keep swatting down California’s efforts to run its own foreign policy through reparations litigation;
Which college majors lead to the lowest scores on the LSAT? Why, the most law-related ones;
And the legal ethics of settlement negotiations.

Why not add Point of Law to your Google Reader or other RSS reader today, along of course with Overlawyered, if you haven’t yet?

Filed under: California, ethics, fraud, legal blogs, medical malpractice, reparations

New review: David Giacalone on BabyBarista and the Art of War

Here’s something we’ve never tried at Overlawyered: a full-length, original book review by an outside contributor. Blogger David Giacalone, whose now-inactive EthicalEsq. (later f/k/a) is fondly remembered and has often been linked in this space, has kindly offered to let us publish his newly written review of BabyBarista and the Art of War, a new novel based on Tim Kevan’s popular BabyBarista column for the U.K.’s Times (a paper to which I’ve contributed as an online columnist in the past). The novel has been hailed as a “Hogarthian romp” and a “satire with edge”; David says it displays its subjects, British lawyers,

acting very much like the worst segments of the American bar: taking huge fees for little work, entering settlements at their clients’ expense (to assure a fee, or to get to a golf course or an early lunch), exploiting underlings, disrespecting a “litigant in person” (pro se) party, making it dangerous to raise sexual harassment charges, etc. It was heartening to hear BabyB warn clients about the risks of no-win-no-fee (contingency) arrangements, and enlightening to see how personal injury claims are fabricated. For the entire 266 pages, the Bar’s foibles and vices are laid bare, but with a light (if exaggerated) touch rather than a heavy hand.

The review is longer than our usual blog post, so we’ve published it on a separate page here.

Filed under: ethics, lawyers, United Kingdom

“A Lawyer Who Tries to Block Settlements”

The Sep. 21 issue of Forbes magazine, now on newsstands, has a lengthy profile by Dan Fisher of my founding of the Center for Class Action Fairness, complete with a photo of my ugly mug gracing the story.

Of interest is a new revelation in the infamous Toshiba class action:

After few consumers availed themselves of a $2 billion settlement over supposedly defective laptop computers in 2000, for example, Toshiba America handed $353 million to a Beaumont charity whose chairman was plaintiff attorney Wayne Reaud, the lawyer on the case. Six years later the charity was still sitting on $250 million and the Texas attorney general sued for breach of fiduciary duty, including paying its president, W. Frank Newton, $560,000 in 2004. Newton is the former president of the State Bar of Texas.

Filed under: CCAF, class action settlements, class actions, cy pres, ethics, South Texas, Ted Frank

Don’t lie to the court about having a brain tumor

The judge will definitely not be happy. [Daniel Schwartz, Connecticut Employment Law; Above the Law]

Filed under: ethics

Rise and fall of an ethically challenged attorney

“In Minnesota legal circles, a newspaper once wrote of him, David Moskal was ‘known for several remarkable achievements, including the fastest disbarment in the state’s history.'” Not content with making more than $1 million a year through his injury practice, Moskal also stole millions from clients. Even after his disgrace, he passed himself off as an attorney while working as a client liaison at a spine-injury center. [Legal Blog Watch, MinnLawyer, WestWord (which also has an interesting background article on the relations between lawyers and injury-treatment clinics in Denver)]

Filed under: ethics, Minnesota