Datelines
al., Robert S. Tigner et.
Justice: Only $ 10,000 an Hour WASHINGTON, D.C. "Being someone's last hope in life—I sort of enjoy that," says Melvin Belli. Belli belongs to an elite corps of lawyers who thrive on such disasters...
...Buderus put it, "If Chase Manhattan, a giant in the banking industry, cannot be trusted, then who can we trust...
...Left alone, but made aware, citizens may become enraged at the injustices perpetrated in the name of justice, at the greed masquerading as sympathy for the bereaved...
...It was a run-of-the-mill news assignment in this industrial stretch across the Mississippi from St...
...The rules have already been applied under an agreement between the city and Welton Becket Associates, an international architectural firm that wants to locate its corporate headquarters in Santa Monica...
...Louis, but what they came up with was far from routine...
...Richard W. Stanczyk thought he had hit pay dirt when an Abdul Enterprises representative offered to help him raise capital for a tuna boat project...
...Maturo's last film was released in December 1978...
...The ad campaign for the program will peak in the spring, according to Raush, "at a time when they [seniors] realize they won't have the money for college...
...Buderus testified, "plus [aj judgment of $2.5 million against me," from financial partners in the defunct spa venture...
...At $200 an hour, a million-dollar settlement that took a normal week of work would net the lawyer $8,000...
...Of course, it is in the best financial interest of a lawyer engaged under a percentage fee arrangement to sue for as much as possible, and to hold out for a whopping settlement...
...Then why, Edwards wanted to know, was the FBI exploring out-of-court settlements with ABSCAM victims in amounts ranging from $40,000 to half a million dollars...
...But Arab agriculturalists come right back with another complaint: It is very expensive to introduce the drip method, they say, interest rates are high, and neither public-sector assistance nor short-term loans are available from the agriculture department...
...Yaacov Vardi, vice president of Israel's water planning company, Tahal, says Israel honors all Arab water rights, but adds that water consumption must be regulated to prevent overuse...
...Reagan has proposed cutting by almost half the Government's most important form of assistance...
...The arrangement is not likely to change soon...
...J.P...
...Everyone expects the case to drag on and end up in the California Supreme Court...
...But how much risk does a lawyer shoulder in handling crash settlements?, Almost everyone agrees that airlines are sitting ducks for liability suits after a plane goes down, and the Air Florida crash will probably be no exception...
...Israeli officials defend their policies, though, saying they are not taking water from anyone, but merely managing a resource...
...He charged the reporters had intentionally libeled him and brought about his financial collapse...
...Enough of these stories moved subcommittee Chairman Don Edwards in mid-March to request an appearance by FBI director William Webster...
...Opponents of Santa Monica's new leadership were outraged by the deal...
...After more than a year—marked in the record only by five pre-trial hearings and a routine exchange of telephone calls DATELINES Profits of doom: The Air Florida crash is a gold mine for lawyers...
...Yet the responsibility to keep fees reasonable falls squarely on the lone citizen confronting the legal system...
...The New York firm of Pester, Goldberg, and Schiff negotiated an out-of-court settlement for Maria Teresa Valle, whose physician husband was killed, and her two children...
...This is little consolation, however, to Arab farmers whose shallow reservoirs are far harder hit by droughts...
...We're only interested in people who we have reason to believe are engaged, or would like to engage, in crime," Webster had said...
...For their lawyer-of-fortune bravado, the disaster specialists get fees typically ranging from one-third to one-half of the final settlements...
...Disaster lawyers argue that the contingency arrangement benefits clients who could not pay a lawyer at an hourly rate or finance any lengthy litigation...
...If we scare some developers away who hope to make a fast buck, we're doing the city justice...
...We're focusing more and more on kids who want to go to college," says Major Brian Raush, head of the Milwaukee District Army Recruiting Command...
...The case will be heard on appeal some time this year...
...The Telegraph never published the memo...
...Pell Grants...
...Arab farmers—forbidden to dig new wells since Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip fourteen years ago—have bitterly watched flourishing Jewish settlements drain their supply...
...ending Washington's contribution to the National Direct Student Loan Program...
...I have lost my own reputation and clients," he said...
...These newest critics of the FBI spell trouble for Webster, who until now has had remarkable success in sanitizing the malodorous legacy of J. Edgar Hoover...
...He testified that the FBI's misdeeds had cost him his $200,000 annual salary and led to $212,000 in debts, a divorce, his son's mental breakdown, and his own attempted suicide...
...and wiping out one-third of the funds for the College Work-Study Program...
...It's pure and simple extortion," says Bill Putnam, a local business owner and outspoken critic of Santa Monica's strict rent control...
...Lou Siegel (LouSiegel, a Los Angeles journalist, writes for several Southern California publications...
...Greg Bailey (Greg Bailey is a St...
...Belli belongs to an elite corps of lawyers who thrive on such disasters as the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 into the Potomac last winter, a hardy bunch ready to charge into the breach for their clients—to "sue everybody who's even remotely involved," as Belli says...
...The city's biggest problem may be overinvestment," says Mayor Ruth Yanatta Goldway...
...Developers have challenged the legality of that decision and have won a favorable ruling in a lower court...
...If the proposals are adopted by Congress this spring, thousands of high school students will be unable to afford college and thousands already enrolled will be forced to drop out...
...or stepping out of the lobby and seeing an attractive public park with benches and maybe even a jogging track...
...Christine Dugas (Christine Dugas is a free-lance writer who recently visited the Middle East...
...In fact, Israeli water officials say that Jewish settlers, who represent only about 3 per cent of the West Bank population, consume almost 15 per cent of the water used there...
...Senator Charles Percy drew him into questionable deals and, eventually, bankruptcy...
...That is what happened in another settlement following the American Airlines crash...
...Most of all, Vardi says, Israel would like to tap water from Lebanon's Litani River...
...In the process, innocent entrepreneurs like Buderus got burned...
...All of them cherished the American Way, the Main Chance, Big Business, and Big Bucks...
...They may refuse to tolerate and subsidize staggering legal fees...
...They say these wells tap into a deep underground reservoir whose water comes from a system completely separate from the Arabs' water sources...
...The excavation for a fifteen-acre office complex had begun when the new council took over and put a freeze on development...
...It may mean paying an hourly rate for any legal work already done, but sacrificing a few hundred dollars now could mean saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees at settlement...
...The Alton Telegraph case raises a tangle of legal questions...
...Can a paper be assessed libel damages for passing a tip on to authorities...
...the courts routinely endorse the customary fees of lawyers...
...The investigation forced the savings-and-loan to withdraw Green's credit, sending several of his companies into a tumble and forcing him to abandon construction of some large apartment complexes...
...Illinois...
...American Airlines' insurer made an initial settlement offer of $450,000 to Higginbotham...
...Supreme Court...
...Are "punitive" damages for libel by the press constitutional...
...Minority students are in an especially tight spot...
...recruiting machines, admitting that they want to lure students dealt out of higher education by the loss of funds...
...her three children were awarded $33,000 each...
...Belli has estimated the total settlement figure for all claims in the crash at $40 million to $60 million...
...And the debts I incurred . . . have created continuous threats of lawsuits for large amounts...
...Libel Without a Cause ALTON, ILLINOIS In 1969...
...At the college level, the Army's recruiting is also picking up speed...
...Informants masquerading as Arabs and one FBI special agent purporting to be the niece of U.S...
...To keep their cover, the con men the FBI had installed as company officials went ahead with business deals, using an FBI friend at Chase Manhattan to back them up...
...and Pester took $383,244 in legalfees, plus expenses...
...Can libel take place when no story appears...
...Israeli water officials are still considering a water agreement with Egypt, but they know one would be expensive...
...My phones have been tapped...
...Unwittingly, Buderus had stumbled into the FBI's ABSCAM snare...
...After months of negotiations between the city and Welton Becket, the company agreed to scale down the project and include a public park and jogging track on the site...
...Not any more...
...A day-care center will be built on the premises, an affirmative action plan for women and minorities will be submitted for city approval, and Welton Becket will construct 100 units of low- and moderate-income housing in another part of town...
...But the incentive does not necessarily pay off for the client...
...eliminating Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants...
...Chicago Lawyer, a publication of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, looked into the records of the Valle and Higginbotham cases and other settlements growing out of the crash...
...To avoid this, the Israeli military government has prohibited Arab farmers from digging new wells or deepening existing ones, and has placed meters and quotas on Arab wells so they will not be overpumped...
...All this came to pass because the memo found its way first to the Justice Department in Washington, and from there to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board...
...That sprawling giant, Los Angeles, is eager to spill over into Santa Monica, and the new government here knows it can't completely shut L.A...
...It's much easier for recruiters to walk through the halls...
...And at the close of 1981, the pressure was such that I also attempted suicide...
...Valle received $396,824.93 of it...
...the two children were awarded a total of $357,165.07...
...the "usual one-third" arrangement would mean legal fees in the $333,000 range...
...Maturo wrote out a check for $10,000...
...Excessive use by anyone could lower the water table, allowing salt water from the sea to enter and ruin the supply for all...
...We must ask their permission for everything, and at any time they can cut off our water supply...
...Even in good years water is scarce, and the demand for it only incites Arab-Jewish enmity...
...Meltzer claimed to have the backing of wealthy Arabs organized around "Abdul Enterprises...
...The questions go on and on...
...Belli himself predicted at a press conference that all of his cases will be a "piece of cake" and settled out of court "within a year...
...To make matters even more absurd, the time spent on the Valle case for a $383,244 fee was less than one-half the time spent on the Higginbotham case for $172,000...
...Higginbotham got $278,000...
...They work under contingency arrangements, agreeing to take a certain percentage of any award...
...Whatever Israel's intentions, this year's drought has brought the water shortage to a crisis...
...As part of its efforts to sniff out political corruption, the FBI set up dummy corporations like Abdul Enterprises to act as venture capital firms—companies with plenty of cash from speculators and an eye for high-risk projects to invest it in...
...Ever since California voters approved that property-tax-cutting measure, they say, the tax burden on business property has been drastically reduced, and when new companies move in they don't come close to covering the city's increased costs for public housing, improved roads, new schools, and other social services...
...Students are caught between a rock and a hard place: tuition hikes and aid cuts on one hand, and record unemployment on the other...
...Louis-area free-lance writer...
...Her lawyer, Richard Moore, rejected it and filed suit for $928,500...
...I have lost friends...
...According to Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Larson of the University of Wisconsin's ROTC program, the number of Army ROTC scholarships available nationally will increase from 8,500 to 12,000—about a 50 per cent jump...
...He went ahead with the deal, and his dream quickly turned into a nightmare...
...in fact, the reporters did not get one word about their hunch into print...
...But that's how the game is played and the progressive coalition that now runs the government here is quickly learning the rules...
...imposing strict limitations on Guaranteed Student Loans...
...For several years the Jordanian government has talked about damming the Yar-muk River between Jordan and Syria...
...In response to the President's recent move, military officials are revving up their extensive public relations and...
...They don't get eggs thrown at them...
...Meltzer was connected to the FBI in some way, he decided not to use me as a witness...
...Although he spent $100,000 in legal fees as a result of ABSCAM, Buderus said, his name is still mud in the Virgin Islands...
...Thus, even the expert implies that the victims' families will be sacrificing big slices of their settlements to lawyers providing relatively simple services at virtually no risk to themselves...
...and letters with the insurer's attorneys—a final settlement of $455,000 was reached...
...Reading, 'Riting, and ROTC MADISON, WISCONSIN The Reagan Administration's decision to gut student financial aids may give the armed forces their biggest shot in the arm since the Vietnam war era...
...We reached a low in Madison in 1973 to 1974 of fifty-eight people, reflecting what happened throughout the country...
...Israel and the West Bank both tap underground reservoirs fed by the same central watershed, he says...
...So-called non-scholarship students agree to serve for three years of active duty and three years of reserve duty, and receive benefits only during their junior and senior years...
...In addition, Israel proper gets a full third of its water from sources that originate in the West Bank foothills...
...Keenen Peck (Keenen Peck is a student at the University of Wisconsin...
...That means the families of the victims will lose up to $20 million of their settlement money, since most of the lawyers will work for the "usual one-third...
...Jeff Stein (Jeff Stein is a contributing editor of The Progressive...
...or riding to the seventh floor and discovering a big, bustling daycare center...
...Word of the firms' existence soon got around, and business people—Buderus was just one— began showing up, looking for a share of the money...
...Had the Pester lawyers charged an hourly rate of $200, the typical maximum fee of senior partners in leading law firms, the thirty-five hours of work would have cost only $7,000...
...They wrote one on their newspaper's letterhead and sent it off...
...Among other things, Edwards wanted to review a statement Webster had made on an ABC news program in September 1981...
...They shared their suspicions with a Federal prosecutor, who asked them to put the information in a memo...
...So Israel covets its neighbors' water sources: rivers in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt...
...I had a discussion with [Robert] Rose, the U.S...
...The customary one-third to one-half of the settlement figure as a standard lawyer's fee has no moral, logical, or economic justification in open-and-shut cases such as the Air Florida crash...
...Ultimately, Arab opposition to Israel's water policy on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip boils down to one thing— control...
...If that seems impossible, it's because you don't live in Santa Monica, California, where a progressive city council is determined to rewrite the rules on corporate and business responsibility...
...Buderus was a Soquel, California, real estate developer with a dream: He wanted to build holistic health spas in the Virgin Islands...
...The Board began checking out the memo's accusations, now generally agreed to be groundless, and came up with some new irregularities between the savings-and-loan and Green...
...Belli, who predicts his own clients will settle for a total of about $9 million, stands to skim a cool $3 million off the top...
...Stanczyk, a Denver accountant, had been an Internal Revenue Service agent for ten years...
...It concluded that the negotiations in the Valle case could not have taken more than thirty-five hours...
...In the future, nobody will put up with that kind of nonsense...
...In the meantime, the development boom in Santa Monica has slowed considerably as the progressives in power battle it out with the landlords, bankers, and builders...
...No lawsuit was ever filed...
...But even if Israel keeps control of West Bank water, it is still faced with a dilemma...
...Yet even with the water flowing from the West Bank, Israeli hydrologists say the nation still doesn't have enough...
...Recruiters say they plan to zero in on college-bound high school seniors, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) plans to expand its scholarship program...
...Clients might learn that the lawyers are not apt to set foot in a courtroom, that the settlement negotiations may take less than forty hours of work, and that there are plenty of competent lawyers who would negotiate the settlements at a straightforward rate of anywhere from $60 to $200 an hour...
...but perhaps the most important is the range of the "absolute privilege" that protects a citizen—but apparently not a journalist—from being accused of libel for reporting a crime...
...After a five-week trial, the jury sided with Green and awarded him the $9.2 million, $2.5 million of it for punitive damages...
...But the internationally funded project has been stalled because Syria refuses to cooperate, and no one can agree on the distribution of the water from the dam's reservoir...
...New technologies for increasing the water supply—cloud seeding, water de-salinization, attempts to halt lake evaporation, and sewage reclamation—have proved either impractical or insufficient...
...The Army has launched "a major campaign" to promote the Army College Fund, he says...
...Israeli officials emphasize that Arab agriculture has actually improved because of the Israeli-invented drip irrigation method, which greatly conserves water...
...That's not all...
...But here any shared sense of things ends...
...Robert S. Tigner and Matt Valencic (Robert S. Tigner is a staff attorney and Matt Valencic is the director of HALT, a national legal reform organization...
...But the contractor, James Green, filed a libel suit anyway and wound up with a $9.2 million judgment against the paper and the reporters...
...City leaders point to Proposition 13 to justify their new demands on developers...
...Yet the Israelis themselves have dug seventeen new wells for Jewish settlements in the occupied territories since 1967...
...After nine months of "negotiation," the plaintiffs got a final settlement of $1,150,000...
...Israel itself once turned down an offer from the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to pump water from the Nile to Israel in return for withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories...
...Attempts have been made to corrupt me...
...Israel's quest for water has become a highly charged issue that exacerbates the region's explosive mood...
...The Bucks Stop Here SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA Imagine taking the elevator to the fourth floor of a modern steel-and-glass office building belonging, say, to the Bank of America, and finding a dozen low-income rental apartments...
...I have been unable to have the taps removed...
...The newspaper insisted the reporters had only acted as good citizens passing a tip along to the authorities...
...Valle's potential lifetime income, rejected an initial settlement offer of $1,100,000, accepted the final offer, filed probate papers, and collected their fees—more than what went to the children...
...But first he needed capital, and a man named Robert Meltzer soon arrived on the scene with an offer to underwrite the project and draw in more investors...
...Under the program, a recruit receives $15,200 for educational purposes after two years of active service, or $22,000 after three years...
...Attorney," he said, "and when I relayed to him my feelings that Mr...
...As Jamil Naser, former mayor of Jericho, says, "We are increasingly at the mercy of the Israelis...
...Already, the radical council majority elected last April has completely revised the building code for this small coastal city of 80,000 to keep development on what city leaders call a "human scale...
...I told my leadership that I expect [Madison's ROTC unit] to double in size in the three years I will be here," Larson says...
...Kai Gulve, a California financial consultant, told a similar tale...
...Because of the demographics—current first-year college students were six years old at the peak of anti-war protests in 1970— and the economic climate, military leaders know that this is a good time to look for a few hundred thousand good men...
...excited by his prospects with Meltzer, Gulve offered to introduce Hollywood filmmaker Sam Maturo to the wealthy and mysterious Arabs...
...All the "venture capital" Buderus ever got from Meltzer and his Abdul Enterprises connection was a phony check for $850,000...
...In return, cadets agree to serve four years of active duty and two on reserve...
...That's how Kai Gulve was ensnared...
...Survivors and relatives of the victims of the Air Florida crash can still escape the disaster elite, even if they have already made "contingency" arrangements...
...In conclusion, I would just like to say that I have worked for the United States Government, I have worked as an IRS agent, and I really could never have believed that an institution like the Chase Manhattan Bank or the FBI could ever cause this form of deception and ruination of both business and personal lives...
...ROTC scholarships pay for tuition...
...The university's Army ROTC program now has seventy cadets, and Larson says he expects to enroll 109 next fall...
...Little did I know that day," Buderus testified to the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, "that this would become the most bizarre and devastating real estate transaction I've ever entered into, one that would take and destroy nearly fifty years of my labor...
...It now uses all of its renewable water supply each year...
...They move quickly to sign up bereaved clients, and well they should, for if the truth had time to creep out, people might take their business elsewhere...
...A number of unsuspecting businessmen fell into the FBI's clutches, and their stories, virtually overlooked by a media gorging on the hapless Harrison Williams, make compelling reading...
...The business sector, the council decided, must now foot that bill...
...The scam "caused and created $30 million worth of lawsuits for me...
...two reporters from the Alton Telegraph were looking into organized crime in Madison County...
...But turning off business developers does not bother city leaders and, in fact, many like the idea...
...In the nine months, two Pester lawyers had met three times with attorneys for the airline's insurer, written them a few letters, arranged an economist's report on Dr...
...Moore took $171,000, or roughly one and three-fourths times the total amount awarded to the children and ohe-third the total settlement...
...Using similar calculations, the Higginbotham case could have been settled at an hourly rate for less than 10 per cent of what Richard Moore took...
...Later, when burned businessmen began making Meltzer the target of lawsuits, Maturo was subpoenaed to testify...
...Experts say water will soon be more valuable than oil, and the nation's thirst will not only affect the negotiations for Palestinian autonomy, but also become a major obstacle to any comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement...
...The Alton case is in some ways an extension of the recent product liability cases," says Dave West, a manager of the Illinois Press Association...
...Other council initiatives have been tied up in court, including a rent control law that may be the strongest in the country and a ban on condominium conversions...
...Consider the case of Mary Higginbo-tham, whose husband, Philip, was killed in the 1979 crash of an American Airlines DC-10 near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport...
...What's more, the Jewish Agency has proposed settling one million Jews on the West Bank by the year 2000, and that would require even more water for the Israelis...
...What is so ominous about the [case] is that one mistake can close a paper...
...Meanwhile, the national ROTC budget is expected to climb by $20 million to more than $260 million...
...Since plaintiffs usually have little sense of whether they'll win their case or of the value and amount of legal work involved, they can be gouged for hundreds of thousands of dollars and never know they were taken...
...That's where the military marches in...
...The reporters, Joe Melosi and Bill Lhotka, came across what they thought were links between a local contractor and a savings-and-loan association allegedly under Mafia control...
...While their crops wither during a dry season like this one, neighboring Jewish fields thrive...
...I am very optimistic...
...Instead, he too got caught in the FBI's fishing nets...
...Buderus was leery of the plan, so he got in touch with the Chase Manhattan Bank and was told that Abdul Enterprises was, indeed, on the up and up...
...Based on this estimate, the Pester firm collected more than $10,000 per hour for its work...
...About ten years ago juries began to award huge settlements in malpractice and product liability cases, and it is now being carried over to libel cases...
...a guardian for her children was awarded $12,500...
...Trapped in the ABSCAM Web WASHINGTON, D.C...
...Its title was Bully...
...He was not the only one...
...But local officials want to make sure that developers who get a piece of Santa Monica also provide real benefits to the community, and their demands are spelled out in the new ordinance...
...Israel does not want to tamper with the supply of groundwater that flows from the West Bank into Israel...
...Fritz Kaump, a Madison high school guidance counselor, says he has noticed more interest in ROTC scholarships lately...
...y FBI informant Meltzer's basic scam was to entice business people into advancing him $10,000 in exchange for millions in venture capital later on...
...Water Thicker than Oil JERUSALEM When storm clouds gather over the Jordan Valley, Arab and Jewish farmers search the sky expectantly and pray, in their respective ways, for enough rain to salvage their crops and break what experts say may be the worst drought in a century...
...The organized bar sits passively by while "specialist" attorneys grab millions of dollars from suffering families...
...They get no fee at all if the case is lost, they say, and they deserve a big chunk of the settlement for taking such a risk...
...books, lab fees, and supplies, and provide $100 a month during the academic year...
...Yet such a plan is stalled for now, since Israel has no formal relations with Lebanon...
...The Air Florida jackpot dwarfs those hypothetical sums...
...Green brought his suit when he found out how the Federal probe got started...
...Many of these kids don't even remember what Vietnam was," Kaump says...
...Since the 140-year-old Telegraph has a net worth of less than $3 million, the judgment, if upheld, will shut it down...
...As real estate developer J.P...
...All parties expect it eventually to reach the U.S...
...My life has been threatened," he testified...
Vol. 46 • May 1982 • No. 5
