Netscape founder and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen has no empathy for attorney William Lerach and his former firm Milberg Weiss, ensnared in a decades-long conspiracy scheme that paid kickbacks to the firm’s clients.
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“Lerach and his equally appalling — and increasingly equally indicted — colleagues at a quote-unquote law firm called Milberg Weiss terrorized the high-tech industry for over a decade, filing baseless lawsuit after baseless lawsuit,” Andreessen wrote in his blog last week after Lerach pleaded guilty.
In his plea, Lerach admitted crossing the line in being an aggressive advocate. The lawyer, who won billions for Enron shareholders, faces up to two years in prison.
“I must confess that my true satisfaction about this miscreant going to meet his new friends in the federal pokey is caused by Milberg Weiss’s 2001 lawsuit against me and my former company, Loudcloud,” Andreessen wrote.
The suit came amidst the dot.com bust. It alleged that Loudcloud made false and misleading statements in the prospectus for its public stock offering. And, it said that Loudcloud insiders bought stock to facilitate the IPO.
“Yes, that’s right — since they couldn’t sue us for insider selling, their normal MO, they sued us for insider buying,” Andreessen wrote.
The suit was settled in 2003 for an “insignificant” payment covered by the companyís insurance, according to an account of the settlement.
Andreessen, whose current company is Ning, got the last laugh. Loudcloud was the forerunner of Opsware, which sold earlier this year to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. Andreessen’s share: $160 million.
That’s the best lawyer joke of all.
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