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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (19296)	9/3/1998 6:58:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25960

<<Lerach is what other lawyers sometimes refer to as a bounty hunter. Bounty hunters--whether on the trail of personal injury claims or (like Lerach) publicly traded companies whose plummeting stock prices belie the optimistic public statements by company officers--live or die on contingency fees. >> <<"In this world there are legal activities that are ethical and legal activities that are unethical," says Tom Proulx, a cofounder of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Intuit Inc. and a leader in the fight to defeat Prop. 211. "What Bill Lerach does may be legal, but it's unethical. I don't think Lerach cares about high technology. He doesn't care if a suit has merit. All he cares about is singling out companies that have stock fluctuations so large, companies where the market cap fluctuations are so big that if it were to fight all the way to a jury trial, it'd be a bet-your-company proposition. Unfortunately, it happens that a lot of technology companies offer Lerach the kind of opportunities he is looking for." Indeed, according to the Santa Clara, Calif.-based American Electronics Association (AEA), 53 of Silicon Valley's 100 largest companies have been hit by a strike suit, most of them Lerach-initiated. Litigation is a part of corporate life, but a strike suit, especially one that bears Lerach's signature, prompts some of the Valley's leading voices to say publicly what is normally uttered only in private. Proulx's description of Lerach as an "extortionist" and "egomaniacal" are among the more judicious comments one is likely to hear from inside the high-tech world. "A very low life form," T.J. Rodgers has said of Lerach, "somewhere below pond scum." Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. in San Jose, has also likened Lerach to a car jacker who jams a gun in the face of every corporate head whose stock has taken a tumble. Al Shugart, CEO of Seagate Technology Inc. of Scotts Valley, Calif., has wondered aloud how a figure as controversial as Lerach has managed to stay alive all these years. "I was thinking maybe something would've happened to him by now," Shugart said in an interview earlier this year. In business, fierce rivals can voice a begrudging respect for one another or reveal something akin to envy. But when the topic turns to Lerach, the conversation drips with malice. >> upside.com