Last Updated

31 Oct 2002

Source: Washington Post, March 11, 2002.

Johnnie Cochran Looks to Raise His Profile Locally

By James V. Grimaldi, Washington Post Staff Writer

Everyone deserves a second chance. So Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. now is looking for a fresh start in Washington after his decade-long relationship with former House Ethics Committee counsel Ralph Lotkin has gone fallow.

For reasons he declined to discuss, the Los Angeles-based Cochran has abandoned his affiliation with the Washington-based firm formerly known as Cochran & Lotkin, and now is teaming up in a joint venture with Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, one of the largest plaintiffs' firms in town.

Since helping O.J. Simpson beat a charge of murdering his ex-wife, Cochran has turned his firm, Cochran, Cherry, Givens & Smith, also known as the Cochran Firm, into a national personal-injury practice.

But despite work on a number of high-profile local cases, Cochran has been largely invisible on the local legal scene while affiliated with Lotkin. The relationship with Cohen, Milstein could provide a boost to his lagging practice here. Lotkin did not return a phone call seeking comment.

To jump-start the union with Cohen, Milstein, Cochran has set his sights on a big local case: representing the wife of U.S. postal worker Thomas L. Morris Jr. (case 15), 55, who died of anthrax inhalation. But that representation in the anthrax case has had a bit of sniping.

That's because, in the anthrax matter, Cochran really is a Johnnie-come-lately.

The first lawsuit in Morris's death was filed by attorney Jimmy A. Bell of Upper Marlboro on behalf of the postal worker's son, Thomas L. Morris III, 33. Bell withdrew the $37 million claim and took the case to mandated arbitration, but he expects to go back to court.

Cochran got involved after Bell filed the first suit. Cochran represents latecomer Mary Morris, the elder Morris's second wife and Thomas Morris III's stepmother. The son and stepmother briefly sparred in Maryland court over control of the estate, but Bell beat Cochran's team. Under Maryland law, estates are split between children and spouses, and the court so ruled.

So now Bell, who at 32 has developed his own deserved reputation for high-profile civil rights cases, including one against Domino's Pizza, is heading back to court.

This time, he'll be arm and arm with Cochran. The estate of the elder Morris, with Bell representing one half and Cochran the other half, plans to sue Kaiser Permanente Marlow Heights Medical Center, where Morris went Oct. 18 complaining of flu-like symptoms. Morris told nurse practitioner Alan Korff that he thought he had anthrax, according to medical records gathered by Bell. Korff told Morris he had a virus, told him to take Tylenol and sent him home. Morris died three days later.

Kaiser spokeswoman Susan Whyte Simon said the nurse called Maryland health authorities, who said that Morris's workplace, the Brentwood post office, was not considered an exposed site at the time. Also, a nose swab did not detect anthrax, she said. "Kaiser Permanente followed the prevailing standard of care provided by public health officials at the time," Simon said.

Kaiser is represented by Armstrong, Donohue, Ceppos & Vaughan of Rockville in the matter. Though Bell already has the case well in hand, he is gracious about working with Cochran.

"Most people would love to be in a situation where they could work side by side with someone they really have admired in their field," Bell said. "It is like a professional basketball player gets an opportunity to play with an NBA legend. Without question, Johnnie Cochran is one of the best trial lawyers in the country."

Cochran's current practice is a long way from the heady days in 1995 when he brilliantly leveraged police mistakes into an acquittal for the former football star Simpson. Famous in Los Angeles first as a county prosecutor and then as a criminal defense attorney, Cochran, 64, has jettisoned the criminal work for plaintiffs' cases. His last criminal case was winning acquittal for rap star Sean "Puffy" Combs, now known as Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, in New York last year on weapons and bribery charges.

"I was just tired" of the criminal work, Cochran told us last week. "When you represent the grandchildren of the grandfathers you used to represent, you have been doing it too long."

Cochran, whose firm has offices in New York, Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee and Alabama, while maintaining his headquarters in Los Angeles, has been quietly building a local practice without Lotkin. He hired Greg Stewart, former general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and has teamed up with local lawyers in other lawsuits.

While eschewing criminal cases, he hasn't abandoned police abuse work. In a case against the Prince George's County Police Department, Cochran is teaming up with Walter Blair of Blair & Lee. Last year, Cochran, along with Blair and Billy Murphy of Baltimore, won a $2 million settlement from the Montgomery County police in the shooting death of Junious W. Roberts Jr.

At a news conference at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Cochran and Cohen, Milstein's Michael Hausfeld will announce their joint venture, which also will include the Florida personal-injury firms Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Echsner & Proctor, and Morgan Colling & Gilbert.

Jockeying for the Lead

In the Enron Corp. debacle, the only people winning are the lawyers. The biggest jackpot ticket so far has been awarded to Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, which won the right to represent the lead plaintiff in the shareholder litigation against Enron.

As the lead law firm, Milberg Weiss gets the lion's share of the fee. That's why the biggest legal battle in shareholder litigation often occurs early when firms scramble to find the client with the most at stake and also gather the most information against the defendant.

Milberg clearly has rounded up some of the best witnesses and evidence in the Enron case, with attorney William Lerach famously marching a box of shredded documents into a Texas courtroom.

As it happens, in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Milberg Weiss has been chastised for providing erroneous information in the litigation against MicroStrategy Inc. in order to win co-lead counsel status. (Milberg Weiss shared co-lead counsel with New York's Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz.)

Under securities lawsuit reform passed in 1995, judges consider which shareholder or group has sustained the biggest losses when choosing the lead plaintiff. In the MicroStrategy case, Milberg Weiss represented Nursing Home Worker's Union Local 144, and estimated that the union lost $610,000. But the actual losses were $80,000.

Milberg Weiss prepared the paperwork with the mistake, the court ruled. "Milberg Weiss's resulting mistake was innocent, an act of negligence rather than bad faith," U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III wrotelast fall. "Yet without the mistake and the resulting inflated figure, Local 144 would not have been named co-lead plaintiff, and Milberg Weiss would not have been named co-lead counsel."

The judge deducted $50,000 from Milberg Weiss's legal fee.

Separately, in Los Angeles, Milberg Weiss is under grand-jury investigation for paying people to serve as lead plaintiffs. The firm said it is cooperating with the investigation.

Unbundling the Truth

Microsoft Corp. has made it clear, once again, that its browser cannot be unbundled from its Windows operating system. That comes in a deposition with company executive James Allchin, who made a similar claim during the Microsoft trial.

Boy, I'm sure glad we got that straight. Because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled last year, 9 to 0, that Microsoft had illegally tied the Web browser to Windows. That would mean they are two separable products.

And with that landmark ruling, it was expected that the Justice Department would seek a settlement or a remedy that would fix this judgment -- that the bundling of the browser to the operating system was the work of a monopolist using its monopoly to illegally favor its own product over rivals. The expectation was that the two products would be separated and that Microsoft would be banned from bundling in the future.

But, that didn't happen in the settlement. Now we know why. Because Microsoft told Charles James, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, that it can't happen. Did you hear that, appeals court? Microsoft says you were wrong. So, let's just throw out that unanimous opinion. You too, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, whom Microsoft in court papers compared to a mere "minister" in the hearing to review the settlement. In the Microsoft world, she is Judge Fait Accompli. Make that Minister Accompli. Case closed.

Speaking of Allchin, there was a hilarious exchange during his deposition. Representing the nine states still in the case was Stephen D. Houck, the former New York antitrust chief. Houck now is a partner with New York's Reboul, MacMurray, Hewitt, Maynard & Kristol. Funny thing is, Houck's former employer, the state of New York, did settle its part of the case with Microsoft.

"I find your presence here bizarre, frankly," said Microsoft attorney Steve Holley of Sullivan & Cromwell. Holley wanted to know if Houck had a waiver from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office, whether he had shared any confidential material he was privy to with his new clients and whether Microsoft's interests would be compromised.

Houck said he had cleared it with New York.

"I disagree with the assumption in your question my presence here is adverse to the state of New York, but in any event the state of New York is well aware that I am acting as counsel to the plaintiff states continuing to litigate this matter," Houck said.

A quick check of Reboul, MacMurray's Web site and we find a button that says, "Click here to view significant representations for Stephen D. Houck." Sadly, the search results in "No representations matching your query found." (Houck informs us that he's doing some work for EchoStar Communications Corp. and Waste Management Inc.)

So, as for Houck working for the remaining nine states: Hey, you get work where you can.

Familiar Faces

The big battle between the General Accounting Office and the Bush administration over the list of energy executives who met with Vice President Cheney features two legendary Supreme Court attorneys: Carter Phillips of Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood and Theodore B. Olson, now solicitor general of the United States.

Congress and the GAO have asked the White House who met with Cheney when he was crafting the administration's energy plan. Cheney refuses to say, citing executive privilege. The White House has already released some information. Some wonder what else Cheney has to hide? More Enron connections? Olson, who previously led Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's appellate practice, was before the Supreme Court just a couple of years ago arguing on behalf of Enron's accountants, Arthur Andersen. His argument in that case, in light of the debacle that has befallen Enron and Andersen, is pretty ironic.

The future solicitor general, on behalf of Andersen, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the American Trucking Association Inc.'s battle with the Environmental Protection Agency over the Clean Air Act. His point: that the EPA was making law, something that was Congress's sole jurisdiction.

Why did Andersen care? Because, Olson wrote in a brief at the time, the Securities and Exchange Commission "has the potential to work fundamental changes in the accounting profession by introducing new and sweeping federal regulation of professional services."

It was all a part of Andersen's successful full-court press to stop accounting reforms by then-SEC chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. Many now argue that if those reforms had been in place, that Andersen might not have engaged in the kind of accounting shenanigans now blamed for the Enron crash.

Now, instead of filing amicus briefs to stem the regulatory tide, Andersen is in a fight for its life and battling off the possibility of criminal indictments. Ah, but it is more work for the lawyers: As many as four law firms, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Brand & Frulla, Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw, and Rusty Hardin & Associates are engaged in that fight.

Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.