
Roundup plaintiffs' attorneys plead guilty in $200M extortion scheme - IMTDb
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/virginia-attorneys-plead-guilty-orchestrating-200-million-extortion-scheme-targeting
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pnw_hazor
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...](https://thenationaltriallawyers.org/profile-
view/Timothy/Litzenburg/21639/)

~~~
trhway
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?

~~~
zenexer
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.

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gruez
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_hazor
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.

~~~
zenexer
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.

~~~
mleonhard
Where did you find this information?

~~~
zenexer
I believe it was in the Reuters article to which dang linked.

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finnh
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...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-02/the-blackmail-
business-isn-t-easy)

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

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-avenatti-
guilty...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-avenatti-guilty-all-
counts-nike-extortion-case-n1137106)

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

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minerjoe
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.

------
dang
We've changed the URL from [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/virginia-attorneys-
plead-guil...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/virginia-attorneys-plead-guilty-
orchestrating-200-million-extortion-scheme-targeting) to an article with more
background. Both are worth reading.

~~~
zenexer
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23622823)
Flagging for your attention.

~~~
dang
Ok, I've changed it back from [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-
masstorts/doj-charges...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-
masstorts/doj-charges-roundup-plaintiffs-lawyer-in-200-million-alleged-
extortion-scheme-idUSKBN1YM2L9). That was from Dec 2019 while the OP is from
June 2020. Sorry!

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

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ykevinator
The only thing grosser than cancer chemical companies are lawyers

~~~
mleonhard
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?

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adrr
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.

~~~
zenexer
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.

~~~
adrr
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
The federal extortion statute, most specifically 18 USC 875(d), seems quite
applicable here: “(d)Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm,
association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in
interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to
injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the
reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any
other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than two years, or both.”

Bribery, on the other hand, under federal law requires that the person being
bribed is a public official, outside of special provisions relating to
sporting contests and port security (separate provisions, not common to those
two circumstances.) Well, and one other inverted scenario involving Members of
Congress, etc., bribing private entities by using official acts to sway hiring
decisions on partisan political grounds. But nothing that seems applicable to
the kind of thing going on here.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
>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.

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dboreham
Many other countries manage without this kind of lawsuit.

~~~
rayiner
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.

