Milberg Weiss Prosecutor Resigns

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The New York Sun

SAN FRANCISCO — The federal prosecutor overseeing the criminal case against a leading class action law firm, Milberg Weiss, has announced that she will resign next month to enter private practice. The U.S.Attorney for Los Angeles and its environs, Debra Wong Yang, said yesterday that she plans to become a partner at a firm headquartered in that city, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

Ms. Yang told The New York Sun yesterday that her transition would have no impact on the criminal racketeering case against Milberg, Weiss, Bershad & Schulman LLP, or a pending decision on whether to expand the indictment beyond the firm, two of its named partners, David Bershad and Steven Schulman, and two lawyers who helped the firm bring some securities cases, Seymour Lazar and Paul Selzer.

“Nobody should read anything into my departure with respect to the progress of the investigation. It has nothing to do with that,” Ms. Yang said.

However, the former state court judge said she had been considering leaving for some time and chose what seemed like a sensible time to make her exit. “We had a number of huge cases in the office,” Ms. Yang said, citing investigations into large companies such as Boeing Co. and Tenet Healthcare Corp, along with the Milberg Weiss probe, which began in 1999.

“I really wanted to make sure we saw them through to fruition. … It’s kind of a big break point,” she said.

Ms. Yang was appointed U.S.Attorney in 2002, becoming the first Asian-American woman to hold that post. She got the job after working for seven years as a line prosecutor in the same office and for five years as a state court judge. Ms. Yang confirmed yesterday that in 2002 she turned down the Bush Administration’s offer to appoint her as a federal judge and asked for the chief prosecutor’s post instead.

More recently, legal sources said, Ms. Yang declined a nomination to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.She said yesterday that she was more intrigued by the possibility of playing a long-term role in helping businesses right themselves after a scandal.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, but on the other side of it,” the prosecutor observed. Ms. Yang will co-chair Gibson Dunn’s crisis management practice, which is headed by a former solicitor general, Theodore Olson, and a former deputy to Mayor Giuliani, Randy Mastro. The firm is a Republican stronghold and home to many members of a conservative legal group, the Federalist Society.


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