Law firm sets sights on Halliburton (Talks about Cheney as defendant)

Financial Times

Law firm sets sights on Halliburton

By Sheila McNulty
Published: August 7 2003 1:16 | Last Updated: August 7 2003 1:16

Dick Cheney, US vice- president, faces being cited as a defendant in an accounting fraud lawsuit against Halliburton, where he was formerly chief executive, after escaping inclusion in earlier lawsuits allegedly because of political considerations.

<snip>

Scott + Scott, which represents one of four lead plaintiffs, has not signed the settlement and, if the law firm gets its way, the case against the Houston-based company will face trial. This time, Mr Cheney is likely to be named as a defendant.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478759375

It will be very interesting to see if a suit will be allowed to be brought or if the administration will argue that it shold wait until his term as VP is up.

If the Supreme Court will allow a sitting president to be named in a lawsuit, then a sitting VP should be an easy target.

But I would bet the house that they will try to make this argument and every pundit who came out against Clinton will line up behind Cheney.

Halliburton won't let Cheney testify, though. I'll bet the current settlement offer triples should Cheney be forced to give a deposition or testify. But I don't see how the Supreme Court sides with Cheney.

so he deserves this and how!


He's Fixing it so that companies which injure consumers can
never be sued.

I hope he loses every penny he's got in legal fees like they
did to the Clinton's

Sounds like some kind of fix was in.

Oh, I am so goddamned surprised! Really. No, REALLY!

In an interview, Mr Schiffrin said he had sought the meeting to explain, as a courtesy, that the vice-president would not be named in the lawsuit. "My point was that there was no basis to name him as a defendant," he said. "Particularly in a time of war."

...
Because the case centres on an accounting issue, and Mr Cheney was chief executive, there was nothing that tied him into the decision-making process on the alleged fraud, Mr Schiffrin said. Nonetheless, his firm named David Lesar, who replaced Mr Cheney as CEO, in the lawsuit. Mr Schiffrin told the Financial Times yesterday that he "honestly can't remember" why Mr Lesar was named.

The class action covers May 1998 to May 2002, a period in which both men led the company.


I need to put August 25th down on my iCal :)

The Clinton v Jones case set that precedent. That would be so ironic though.

decide that Cheney would suffer undue harm if he were to lose the case, therefore the lawsuit should be stopped before any additional information is discovered.
precendent set election 2000

Terrence O'Donnell, private counsel to Mr Cheney, said: "We have never requested anyone to forego litigation against the vice-president because the country was at war."

(We told them that if they valued their toenails and genitals, they'd best give it a good thinkin', though...)

Enough of this "for the duration" crap; we've already defined this war as permanent, so anything excused for the temporary time period of "ABSOLUTELY FOREVER" should be correctly represented as such.

This is the creep who put a little love note in employees' last pay envelope before Christmas to inform them that showing up for work next year would be an agreement that they couldn't sue the company. Gotta love these guys.

yeah right....