Give U.S. Sen. John Cornyn credit. The Texas Republican stepped into a breach where lesser lawmakers are too compromised to tread. Here’s the situation: When Enron and WorldCom were caught in fraudulent behavior, congressmen held high-profile hearings and rushed to draft bills to fix what they described as widespread corruption in the business world. But when the nation’s three most famous class-action plaintiffs’ lawyers— Bill Lerach, Melvyn Weiss and Dickie Scruggs — were sentenced to jail this spring for multiple felonious federal offenses, Congress was strangely silent, even though Lerach has repeatedly described his criminal behavior as “industry practice.”
The two exceptions were House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, whose recent calls for hearings have been studiously ignored by Democratic leaders, and now Cornyn in the Senate, who introduced a bill that should get quick passage. Entitled the “Securities Litigation Attorney Accountability and Transparency Act” (S.3033), the Cornyn bill responds directly to the core Lerach/Weiss abuses (giving illegal kickbacks to clients) and also provides for greater transparency and consistency in the judicial certification of plaintiffs. It further directs courts to establish competitive bidding by attorneys in most class-action cases, and encourages the U.S. Comptroller General to publish regular studies of how much money successful class-action attorneys make per hour.
