Consumer Law

Ken Feinberg?s Stunning Ethical Lapse

By Joe Consumer

Back to the topic of the ethically-challenged Gulf Coast Claims Facility, administered by Ken Feinberg.  Mr. Feinberg?s firm, Feinberg Rozen, is being paid $850,000 a month by BP to run it, settle claims against BP and then release from liability BP and all companies responsible for causing the disaster.  As if that were not bad enough, check out the latest:

• Mr. Feinberg hired NYU law professor Stephen Gillers to write a letter in a seeming attempt to clear Mr. Feinberg of conflict of interest charges.  But as the Associated Press reported, ?Gillers was paid $950 an hour with BP?s money? to ?declare[] that the czar of the $20 billion claims fund for Gulf oil spill victims is independent of the oil giant.  ? Feinberg said the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, created to administer payments from the fund to people and businesses, is billing BP for Gillers' services. ? Both Gillers and Feinberg said they don't believe there is anything wrong with using BP money to pay for the advice.?

• Mr. Feinberg has hired a BP defense firm, the Mississippi-based law firm Brunini, Grantham, Grower and Hewes, to advise victims filing damages claims through the Gulf Coast Claims Facility.  So, of all the firms that Mr. Feinberg could hire, he chose this one to offer ?free legal advice? to victims filing claims against BP, asking them to release BP of all future liability. What?s more, had a journalist for the Mobile Press-Register not started digging around, we'd never have known about this. 

Moreover, Mr. Feinberg sees no ethical problem here.  The paper reports, ??Ken was aware that Brunini was doing some work for BP, but it is completely separate,? said Amy Weiss, a spokeswoman for Feinberg. ?There is a wall in between. Ken did vet it, and there is no conflict. Any lawyers at that firm that are working for BP are not working on anything related to the GCCF.??  Of course, others are shocked by this revelation:

?It is almost like there is a direct conflict. They were representing British Petroleum and now they are supposed to be advising people suing BP? That should raise a lot of red flags,? said Robert Wiygul, a Mississippi-based environmental attorney not affiliated with the Brunini firm.

?It is one of our cardinal rules as an attorney, you can?t represent people with opposing interests. That?s No. 1 in the rule book,? Wiygul said.

This all begs the question, are Brunini lawyers even informing victims of this problem, let alone getting formal conflict of interest waivers?  Does Mr. Gillers have an opinion, we wonder?  We?d hire him, but unfortunately, his viewpoints are a bit too expensive for us. 

The Center for Justice & Democracy sent a follow up letter today.  Check in out. 

Full post as published by ThePopTort on January 04, 2011 (boomark / email).