Roundup plaintiffs' attorneys plead guilty in $200M extortion scheme

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/virginia-attorneys-plead-guilty-orchestrating-200-million-extortion-scheme-targeting

by IMTDb • 6 years ago

104 32 6 years ago

minerjoe• 6 years ago

Wow. Monsanto and Bayer, probably? Is this where the attourneys have clients that actually got cancer and they were going to pocket the money and not give the cancer victim anything? I do hope they rot.

dang2• 6 years ago

We've changed the URL from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/virginia-attorneys-plead-guil... to an article with more background. Both are worth reading.

zenexer6• 6 years ago

Can you change it back? The justice.gov link is much newer and contains significant new information. For example, the Reuters article emphasizes that the defendant was not yet guilty and a second person hadn’t yet been charged. However, the justice.gov link says both are now defendants, and both pleaded guilty.

Edit: This is already causing confusion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23622823 Flagging for your attention.

dang2• 6 years ago

Ok, I've changed it back from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-masstorts/doj-charges.... That was from Dec 2019 while the OP is from June 2020. Sorry!

gruez• 6 years ago

What were they expecting? That Monsanto (presumably "Company 1") would give then 200 million and hope that they'll call off the lawsuit? What's preventing them from suing anyways? If the legal threat is real, what's preventing others from suing?

pnw_hazor2• 6 years ago

They already won a $289 million judgment in California and were threatening to leverage that result into more lawsuits.

I imagine that because their the CA case had some unusual facts, they must have thought it would be easier to switch-sides for a small fee rather than trying to catch lightning in a bottle again.

zenexer6• 6 years ago

It’s hard to be sure, but it sounds like they were lower-level lawyers at the firm that won the Johnson case and wouldn’t have directly benefited monetarily from winning additional cases. Seemingly, they were offering to ruin the case by deliberately botching the tasks that their firm assigned to them, presumably without the firm’s knowledge.

zenexer6• 6 years ago

It sounds like the defendants were lower-level lawyers at the firm that was initially suing Company 1. (According to one of the articles, it seems they were later fired and started their own firm.) Rather than offering to drop the case, they were allegedly offering to throw the case by deliberately botching certain tasks that their firm was assigning to them, presumably without the firm’s knowledge.

pnw_hazor2• 6 years ago

King of Torts IRL

"Timothy Litzenburg has spent the bulk of his career battling the manufacturers of cancer-causing products. That kind of undertaking is akin to David v. Goliath, but he has found that when the truth is on your side, the playing field becomes more level."

https://thenationaltriallawyers.org/profile-view/Timothy/Lit...

trhway• 6 years ago

That is kind of surprising that a lawyer with so much battle experience would fall in such a simple way. Got carried away by greed?

zenexer6• 6 years ago

I’m assuming he wrote that himself or had it written on his behalf. There aren’t a lot of facts available, but from reading the two articles (justice.gov, Reuters), it sounds like his level of experience is a matter of debate.

mchusma• 6 years ago

The sadder part is that this is very close to a great many lawsuits go. This did not read to me to be much different than all civil lawsuits I have seen. Baseless claims followed by threats that it will cost more to defend than just settle.

The biggest issue with American civil law is cost to resolve disputes. It's obscene.

elliekelly• 6 years ago

If you know attorneys who are conducting themselves in this manner you should report them to the bar because they shouldn’t have a license to practice law. This conduct was far outside the bounds of their ethical obligations and is not at all what happens in a normal civil suit.

hammock• 6 years ago

It's the same racket Michael Avenatti was caught doing to Nike.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-avenatti-guilty...

These are high profile examples, and they might be the "smoke" to a "fire" somewhere most people don't yet know about.

nullc• 6 years ago

It's extremely rare for an attorney to get disbarred. Pretty much the only time someone will be reliably disbarred is if they steal a client's funds.

digitaltrees• 6 years ago

No it’s not. Settling a lawsuit where money goes to the plaintiffs is normal. A lawyer offering to switch sides and knowingly create a conflict of interest using a pretext of a consulting agreement violates a lawyer duty of loyalty to their client. Agreeing to do that in exchange for payment under threat of harm to the company is extortion that is totally different than simply bringing a case in court where there is a venue for objective judgment.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 6 years ago

That said, the criminal complaint against Litzenburg reads like a vindication of all of the ugly criticisms that mass tort defendants throw at plaintiffs’ lawyers. Tort reformers could not have made up a story that casts plaintiffs’ lawyers in a more damning light than the government’s allegations against Litzenburg.

Tort reform is important. That being said, there needs to be a way to punish companies when they do bad stuff. Unfortunately, class action lawsuits are often viewed by the corporations as a cost of doing business, and most of the money goes to the trial lawyers, and the consumers end up getting a $5 voucher or even less.

I propose an alternative to class action law suits. Singapore style caning of the the C-Suite and board of directors for corporate malfeasance. I think consumers who have been scammed would feel more that justice was done than if they got say 1 month's free credit monitoring. In addition, it would align incentives for the management if their ass was literally on the line. It would also be cheap to administer and would not contribute to our prison population.

dboreham• 6 years ago

Many other countries manage without this kind of lawsuit.

rayiner• 6 years ago

Many other countries have much more “mother, may I” product safety and design regulations up front. I’m not sure which way is more efficient, but there is no free lunch.

adrr3• 6 years ago

I can’t see this standing up in court. Is there any case law saying that threats of legal action can be construed as extortion? There are thousands of legal demand letters that go out everyday.

zenexer6• 6 years ago

They already pleaded guilty; the link was changed to an outdated article. (See comment below by dang.)

The extortion is this:

1. They were responsible, in part, for suing Company 1, presumably in the high-profile Monsanto lawsuits.

2. They offered Company 1 a deal: if Company 1 bribed them for $200M, they would deliberately throw the case.

3. Company 1 reported that misconduct to the DoJ.

4. Assuming Company 1 is Monsanto, the original lawsuits were successful; one case in particular awarded two plaintiffs $1B each.

The extortion here is that the lawyers were offering to throw the case and cost Company 1 only $200M instead of (presumably) $2B+, plus legal fees.

adrr3• 6 years ago

Interesting, the real crime is that they weren’t acting in the best faith for their clients. Still doesn’t make sense as an extortion case unless soliciting bribes falls under extortion.

zaroth2• 6 years ago

You may have heard of a guy named Michael Avenatti...

adrr3• 6 years ago

He didn’t threaten legal action. He would need a victim to represent if it was legal action.

ykevinator• 6 years ago

The only thing grosser than cancer chemical companies are lawyers

mleonhard2• 6 years ago

I often see comments like this on Reddit, not on HN. HN comments that state an emotion usually go on to explain why they have a particular emotion. How about rewriting your comment to better fit with HN style?

finnh• 6 years ago

Sounds like David Boies looking to extort people with Epstein sex tapes. Over to you, Money Stuff:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-02/the-bl...

iandanforth• 6 years ago

When you do it to Monsanto, it's not a crime.

Roundup plaintiffs' attorneys plead guilty in $200M extortion scheme

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