Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (Vioxx ‘Trial in a Box’ Cuts Cost of Filing Suit) discusses how plaintiff’s lawyers pursuing Vioxx claims against pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck & Co. are using a pre-packaged set of materials to make it easier to sue the giant drug maker.  The materials are free but come with strings attached.  Plaintiff’s using the canned complaints will owe it’s authors a contingency fee of 3-6% if they are successful in recovering money from Merck through settlement or at trial. 

     A well organized plaintiff’s bar that makes such cookie-cutter packages freely available and shares strategies and information is one of the hidden costs associated with mass litigation.  It provides a compelling reason for managing legal risks wisely and staying out of the plaintiff bar’s sites.

     For more information about how to manage business legal risk more effectively see The Business Guide to Legal Literacy: What Every Manager Should Know About the Law.

“You couldn’t build an AIG today,” [Hank Greenberg] explains.  Overbearing regulators, new corporate governance rules, protectionism, a failing tort system, prosecutors unleashed — these, as he sees them, are the obstacles to corporate greatness.

Wall Street Journal, April 15-16, 2006.

     Kimberley Strassel’s interview with former AIG head Hank Greenberg who was unceremoniously ousted from his position last year highlights the dramatic change in legal playing field of business.  Mr. Greenberg is not shy about his views of these changes.  He doesn’t like them and he is spending a considerable amount of money challenging them.

     Few business leaders have the financial resources a Hank Greenberg does.  They therefore have a choice to make: they can hang on to the old definition of corporate greatness spend money railing against a system that requires more checks and balances, or they recognize that the changed legal landscape is in response to perceived abuses and figure out how to successfully navigate the new terrain and achieve corporate greatness under the new rules.