Worst Lawyering Of The Year Nominee
By my reading, some Wachtell lawyers just cost Chase about one billion dollars. According to the NYTimes, one of the major factors in Chase's decision to up their bid for Bear Stearns from $2/share to $10/share may have been a poorly-drafted guarantee. How'd you like to be the associate who drafted that language, or the partner who approved it?
posted by QueensGuy @ 10:53 AM
3 Comments:
Oh, hell, QG. There's worse lawyering than that about every two hours.
This is just the worst outcome.
Call it Worst Hindsight of the Year.
SWMBCg, etc.
The deal was going down and a resolution needed to be found which would save face for the bigboys (ie the nonlawyers) and the reason big firm lawyers get paid so much is that their role is to play the patsy and take the fall. if heads have to roll, why not a $200k associate- Wachtell will need to downsize anyway and even if they don't there's plenty of fish on the sea-especially this year.
Nah, CG, you've got to remember that here on Pajama Guy, everything can be given a dollar value. If I show up drunk for court and my innocent client gets the death penalty, how much economic harm can I have caused? Well, even if I admit all fault in a wrongful death suit, the most his family is going to get is $10MM or so. This is a hundred times worse.
On a related note, if I had represented Bill Clinton in the civil suit where he was deposed to historic effect, I would have let her take a default judgment, claiming he couldn't be distracted. What could her damages have been?
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