If, as campaign finance reformers have long claimed, the answer to queries like that posted by the headline above is to be found in the list of the House Judiciary Committee chairman’s most generous campaign donors, then the answer is lawyers and law firms, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
And not just any kind of attorneys, either, as is made clear by the fact Conyers’ biggest single contributor since 1989 is the American Association for Justice nee American Trial Lawyers Association.
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In short, the man who heads the most important House committee on the nation’s judiciary is an ardent advocate for and protector of the interests of class-action securities lawyers.
That is why the conventional wisdom scoffs at the notion that Conyers will pay any heed whatsoever to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s call Friday for a hearing on the trial lawyer scandal epitomized by the crimes of the securities class-action securities law firm formerly known as Milberg Weiss.
The Examiner maintains the hope, however, that Conyers and indeed every member of Congress is, in the final analysis, possessed of sufficient character and independence to respond properly when apprised of a serious threat to the integrity of the American legal system, no matter who appears on his or her contributors list. And Boehner made clear in a letter to Conyers that there is indeed an abundance of evidence of “a clear and present threat” that goes way beyond the fact of guilty pleas by four senior Milberg Weiss partners in the past year.
They admitted to paying at least $11.7 million in kickbacks for favorable treatment by plaintiffs, beginning in about 1979 and continuing for two decades. The four lied about the scheme in court even as it netted the firm an estimated $250 million in legal fees from more than 150 class-action securities lawsuits, many filed against the biggest names in American business.
One of the four, William Lerach, claimed during his sentencing that such kickback schemes were “industry practice” and that “everybody was paying plaintiffs.”
As U.S. District Judge John Walter, who sentenced Lerach to two years in federal prison, said, “The scope and the breadth of this conspiracy was breathtaking,’’ adding that it goes “to the core of our judicial system.”
In his letter to Conyers, Boehner rightly called for bipartisan hearings aimed at determining just how widespread are fraudulent class-action securities lawsuits and whether there are other types of conflicts between the interests of class-action lawyers and the investors they claim to represent. If Conyers sits on his hands or simply convenes token hearings, the conventional wisdom will have been prove correct. The American people have a right to expect more of Conyers andCongress.
