After a renewed interest in the fact that Locke Liddell, Harriet Miers' law firm, settled two cases for $22 and $8 million respectively, John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum, argues vigorously that it is insupportable to infer anything about the actions of the firm from the settlement, and then again unsupportable to infer from the actions of the firm anything about the actions of Miers.  In my earlier post, at least one commenter seems to agree with John's point of view.

I still believe that we can infer from the size of the settlement and the rarity of judgments of against well-respected law firms for such cases that some sort of evidence had to exist that would look fishy to a jury.  Perhaps not sufficient evidence, but some evidence.  In hunting around, I found this reprint of a 2000 Texas Monthly article on both cases brought against Liddell.  The facts as they are stated there do seem fishy -- moving a client around after one attorney thinks the client is lying to him, writing letters on behalf of a client that the client pays all bills when due when the firms' own bill is past due, etc.  None of the facts may add up to a judgment under the Texas cause of action for "misrepresentation to a nonclient," but they might not look good.  Also, as John points out, the clients in question where con men, and a law firm might be willing to pay money not to have their firm's name in the same sentence with a con man too many times.

As to John's second point that none of this says anything about Miers or her ability to be a S/C justice, I am unsure.  For one thing, at the time, she was both President of the firm and a 5-year board member of the ALAS charged with creating internal controls for law firms to avoid just this kind of liability.  So, why didn't her own firm check to see whether their clients were felons or on probation before writing letters in their support to investors?

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