Heading to NYC to look into financial-meltdown litigation

Over the past few days, investors seeing red ink due to the nation’s financial crisis have called Susman Godfrey’s New York City office, asking if the firm can help them recover their financial losses through litigation. As a result the firm formed a financial fraud task force at its New York office, and four partners from other offices were reporting there on Sept. 23 to help evaluate the claims. Firm founder Stephen Susman says the prospective clients include wealthy individuals and pension funds; other firms referred some of the callers to Susman Godfrey due to conflicts. “I don’t know where this is going to lead, but we are ready in case this leads somewhere,” Susman says. “The hard thing is trying to figure out who to sue, who still has money.” The lawyers temporarily working in New York are Eric Mayer of Houston, Terry Oxford of Dallas, Marc Seltzer of Los Angeles and Floyd Short of Seattle. They join New York partners Susman, Bill Carmody, Robert Rivera and Jacob Buchdahl on the ad hoc task force. Susman, who splits his time between Houston and New York, says the firm’s partners decided over the weekend at the firm’s annual retreat in Colorado to temporarily staff up in New York. Susman says he doesn’t know what to think of the $700 billion plan to rescue the nation’s troubled financial system, because he’s not privy to the information that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulsen Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernacke have provided to Congress when seeking approval for the bailing. “The devils are in the detail,” says Susman.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys