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Lit Support Guy: Do shareholders realize that Morgan Stanley "kicked Kirkland under a bus"

I have a blog-crush on Matthew McCarrick, The Litigation Support Guy, whose coverage of the Morgan Stanley Sunbeam fraud litigation has been superb. Today he takes on the financier's firing of another firm, Kirkland & Ellis, shedding light where shareholders perhaps should look:

"As events were rapidly unfolding in March with a closely watched bare-knuckle courtroom brawl between two powerhouse legal teams, accusations of obstruction and a possible cover-up, not to mention the Court’s blistering adverse inference charge and partial default judgment (which  hammered the last nail into Morgan Stanley’s coffin), Morgan Stanley fired Kirkland & Ellis, virtually on the spot, and suggested to the Court that it was just then learning about the facts surrounding the e-mail debacle. Within 24 hours, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that Morgan Stanley raised the specter of a malpractice action in a conference call with Kirkland & Ellis when notifying the firm it was being fired...

"Morgan Stanley and Morgan Stanley alone dropped the ball here.  They completely undermined Kirkland's ability to successfully defend the institution and it is going to cost shareholders, at a minimum, well north of a billion dollars when all is said and done. Furthermore, in the interim, they threw Kirkland under the bus in every venue they could, and did so knowing full well that Kirkland would be ethically forbidden from ever defending themselves."

Tune in here for McCarrick's bulleted digest of events. These are the CliffsNotes any litigator and any reporter covering this case should read.

Related stories:

• Backstory on a $604 million verdict: Morgan Stanley's e-mail debacle
• Wake-up call on e-discovery: Morgan Stanley's e-mail fumble hits WSJ p. 1

Posted by Product Team on May 18, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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