Weiss's Plea
Mr. Weiss and his wife established the Melvyn and Barbara Weiss Public Interest Foundation at New York University School of Law to assist graduating public-interest lawyers in retiring their student loans. He has received the Anti-Defamation League's Gotham Award and Humanitarian Award; the United Jewish Appeal's Proskauer Award, given annually to an exemplary Jewish lawyer and humanitarian; the B'nai B'rith of Argentina Dignity & Justice Award for humanitarian activities; and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Foundation, Inc.
Such is the career that was summarized on the Web site of the law firm Milberg Weiss, in a biography that the firm abruptly removed yesterday as superlawyer Melvyn Weiss pleaded guilty to charges of a federal criminal conspiracy. In a statement, Mr. Weiss's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, described his client as "a consummate humanitarian." Weiss agreed to serve between 18 and 33 months in prison and to pay $10 million in fines and penalties.
The plea deal would make Mr. Weiss the fourth partner to admit wrongdoing in the case; William Lerach, David Hynes, and Steven Schulman also pleaded to federal charges that stem from illegally paying plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits. Messrs. Weiss and Lerach, and the law firm they ran, were big political donors to Democrats, both in New York and on the national scene.
At the time the charities and politicians accepted Mr. Weiss's largesse, they had no way of knowing he would eventually offer to plead guilty to a crime. We'd like to think that he was being honored for being a humanitarian rather than just because he was, and is, rich.
Mr. Weiss and his partners made their careers, and their fortunes, casting those they were suing — insurance and tobacco executives, Swiss bankers — as crooks. Some of them may have been, though many were not. Now these lawyers are admitting to the court that they are crooks, too. From where we sit, what should be illegal is not paying plaintiffs, but trial lawyers exacting enormous costs on the economy, and winning enormous fees, by launching actions that undermine the notion of individual responsibility. As so often is the case, the scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal.
Prosecutors can do their best to root out illegal behavior, as they have in this case. Congress has already acted to reform the class-action system from the "first-to-file" system that engendered the Milberg Weiss abuses. But until Congress and the state legislatures act further to reform the civil litigation system, the costs of Weiss's career will be borne by all of us.
