David Boies, the Adelphia bankruptcy, and "Amici LLC," Chapter
2:
The Wall Street Journal reports this
morning that Max Shulman, a senior partner at Cravath, representing
Deloitte & Touche
LLP, has written to the judge presiding over the Adelphia bankruptcy
(Southern District of New York, #02-41729) protesting both the
"fees and tactics" of Amici, the document-management
company partially founded and owned by colleagues and relatives
of David Boies.
According to Shulman’s letter, the requirement to use Amici was
"foisted" on his client and Amici had an "economic
lock-up"
on the document database by making it too costly to migrate to
any competitor. Furthermore, the database was populated with
patently irrelevant documents including menus, cookbooks, travel
brochures, and shoe catalogs. (We all know people waste time
at work, but this puts the indirect imprimatur of a federal court
on exactly how they waste time—with food and fashion fantasies,
and vacation planning.) In sum, Shulman writes: "Using
Amici has been a disaster."
Philip Korologos, the lead Adelphia lawyer at Boies-Schiller,
retorts that his firm "didn’t select" the documents, and that Amici’s
pricing and performance have been "competitive."
Entertainment value aside, I return to this unfolding saga for
the hard steel of the business and economic issue being vaulted
to prominence: No matter how long and hard one may work at
establishing a reputation—in this case, that of Boies-Schiller
for league-leading counsel on good corporate governance—one
can put that reputation at risk in a heartbeat through mis-steps.
Clients’
memories for value lists and mission statements are short, and for discordant behavior at odds with those declarations
are long.
I have communicated with both Messrs. Shulman and Korologos in
hopes of obtaining more "primary source" material. Why
do I think we have not heard the last of this?
