http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Business_%26_Finance/Investments/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_W/threadview?bn=86316&tid=563597&mid=564326
Bopfan Wrote: {copied with their standard permission for bi-directional copying}
When you've got no helpful cards, you bluff, then go down in flames. In most cases that just entails losing the case or the controversy. In this case it will entail disgorging money and professional discipline against one or more attorneys at a nationally recognized law firm. The humiliation in the New York Law Journal will be piled on as gravy.
When you have a winning hand in the law (i.e., you represent a defendant and the plaintiff's claim is barred by the statute of limitations), you get what we call 'judgment on the pleadings'. When you don't have a slam dunk but the court might be persuaded to side with you, you fight like crazy. When you have no chance of winning, well, again, you bluff.
WMI and Weil know that everyone in this case knows that the plans/DS' they've submitted have no chance of being approved. None.
If WMI were truly insolvent (i.e., hopelessly insolvent), there would be no EC and no examiner. Weil lost much of its power in January when the EC was formed. It lost ALL of its power when the court reversed herself and appointed the examiner. It is trying to save its face, nothing more, as it knows that the examiner's report will be a scathing indictment of the firm depicting in vivid detail myriad ethical breaches against WMI's equity constituent (i.e., Weil's TRUE client) on a scale that has probably not been seen at the American commercial bar due to the enormity of the losses WMI equity would have suffered.
In the public eye the firm is proceeding as though it and WMI are still in control. Behind the scenes Marcia Goldstein and other senior Weil management are bracing themselves for the worst and trying to figure out how to (1) keep as much of the billings as possible and (2) frame arguments with the NY bar disciplinary committee to minimize damage (i.e., limit sanctions to Rosen, only). If I were in Weil's position these two issues would be my utmost concern.
While a state bar might usually be satisfied with one goat, in the instant case, given the thousands of letters that will be filed in support of discipline against the three Weil partners and Tal, the NY bar will probably cast its net wider as I've discussed at length.
