Elizabeth Warren issues incomplete list of cases

Elizabeth Warren issues incomplete list of cases

Minutes before tonight’s debate, Elizabeth Warren issued a list of all of the cases she has worked on since joining Harvard.  It was an impressive list, proving what I have said all along, she practiced law on a regular basis from her Harvard office.  But she was not licensed in Massachusetts.

Via The Boston Globe, here are the cases (I did not include the case descriptions provided by Warren):

Elizabeth Warren tonight, just before the debate, bowed to a request by Scott Brown to release a list of her legal clients. The Warren campaign emailed what they called a full roster of her cases, prompting Warren to call on Brown during the debate to release his own list…. Here is the list released by Warren.

US SUPREME COURT

• Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Bailey, 557 U.S. 137 (2009)
• Rousey v. Jacoway, 544 U.S. 320 (2005).
• Till v. SCS Credit Corp., 541 U.S. 465 (2004).
• FCC v. NextWave Personal Communications, 537 U.S. 293 (2003); see also In re FCC, No. 99-5063 (petition for rehearing and petition for rehearing en banc, 2d Cir. 2000).
• Bank of America Nat’l Trust Assn. v. 203 North LaSalle Street Partnership, 526 U.S. 434 (1999).
• In re Chateaugay, No. 95-63 (1995).

UNITED STATES COURTS OF APPEALS

• Cadle Co. v. Schlichtmann, 267 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 2001).
• Falise v. American Tobacco Co., 229 F.3d 1135 (2d Cir. 2000).
• In re National Gypsum Co., 219 F.3d 478 (5th Cir. 2000), cert. denied sub nom NGC Settlement Trust v. National Gypsum Co., 121 S.Ct. 2238 (2001).
• In re Cajun Electric Power Cooperative, 150 F.3d 503 (5th Cir. 1998), cert. denied sub nom Mabey v. Southwestern Electric Power Co., 119 S.Ct. 2019 (1999).

UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT

• In re Fairchild Aircraft Corp., 184 B.R. 910 (Bankr. W.D. Tex. 1995), vacated 220 B.R. 909 (Bankr. W.D. Tex. 1998).
• In re P.A. Bergner & Co., 187 B.R. 964 (Bankr. E.D. Wis. 1995), aff’d in part and rev’d in part sub nom Matter of P.A. Bergner & Co., 140 F.3d 1111 (7th Cir. 1998); see also In re P.A. Bergner & Co., No. 95-1087 (E.D. Wisc., opened 1995).
• Central and South West Corp. v. El Paso Electric Co., No. 95-1108 (Bankr. W.D. Tex., filed 1995); El Paso Electric Co. v. Central and South West Corp., No. 95-1120 (Bankr. W.D. Tex., filed 1995); see also El Paso Electric Co. v. Central and South West Corp., Nos. 95-708, -709 (W.D. Tex., filed 1995).

Even a quick look demonstrates that the list is not complete.

Here is the paragraph which I linked in my prior post from Warren’s 2002 sworn Statement listing the bankruptcy court cases she was working on at the time as well as some earlier legal representations.  I have highlighted cases or matters not on the list just released by Warren:

10. …. In addition to these academic and legislative activities, have consulted with a number of companies on mass tort issues. I served in an advisory capacity to Dow Chemical, the parent company of Dow Coming, in the early days of the Dow Coming bankruptcy I have assisted the Johns Manville Trust and the National Gypsum Trust in appellate litigation. I have been an expert witness on behalf of the National Gypsum Trust and the Fuller Austin trust.  These trusts were formed as part of the confirmation of a plan of reorganization in mass tort asbestos bankruptcies. I have assisted in the preparation for petitions for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court in two cases involving future claims, one in an environmental context and one in an employee liability context. I have argued a case on behalf of Fairchild Aviation, an airplane manufacturer facing future claims liability. I have filed an amicus brief in future claims litigation involving Piper Aircraft. [Note – it appears there was a paragraph numbering problem in the original, and that the above paragraph was supposed to be numbered “11”]

12. In addition, I am working with Caplin & Drysdale as a consultant in Chapter 11 proceedings involving the Babcock & Wilcox Company, Pittsburgh Coming Corporation, Owens Coming Corporation, Armstrong World Industries, Inc., W.R. Grace & Company, G-1 Holdings, Inc., United States Gypsum Corporation, Federal-Mogul Global, Inc. and North American Refractories Company.

The bankruptcy cases listed in paragraph 12 were legal representations in which Warren submitted bills, for which we have some documentation from public records, for “professional legal services.”

So Warren’s case list of cases is incomplete.  She also doesn’t list legal representations which did not involve filed cases, for example, where she advised companies or individuals.

For someone who claims to have come clean, Warren didn’t do a very good job.

Equally important for the issue of whether Warren was practicing law in Massachusetts without a license, we now have documented at least 22 cases Warren handled from her Massachusetts office.

Update:  Looks like someone is leaving wiggle room about whether the list is complete, because the Globe now has changed the headline to Prior to debate, Warren releases information on her cases and has changed the key sentence to “The Warren campaign emailed a list of cases she had been involved in, saying they had been found in a search of various legal databases.”  No longer is the list claimed to be complete, which we know it is not.  The Warren campaign cannot blame the “databases,” all they had to do was read this blog and Warren’s 2002 sworn Statement.

Notice Warren’s political trick.  Minutes before the debate, before anyone could check the list, she claims she released a list of clients, and she repeated that claim during the debate.  Warren made much of it, but now it turns out it is not complete.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.