Editorial: Business Crime in Texas

01 May 2007

Meadows Collier Reed Cousins & Blau LLP is one of three firms in the state to have more than one attorney listed in this publication. Charles Meadows is a “stand-out practitioner” and was praised by one source as a provider of “the best defence one could wish for”. Meadows is also a certified public accountant. Charles Blau joins Meadows from the Dallas office and aside from his courtroom skill also provides “first-rate counselling” to companies on creating, enacting and administering ethics and compliance programmes. 

Haynes and Boone LLP also puts in a strong performance, with two individuals in the chapter. Barry Mcneil is also listed in the Litigation and Competition chapters and was praised by numerous sources for his work in the criminal antitrust arena. McNeil served with the DoJ prior to entering private practice. Lawrence Finder has recently worked on a securities class action for Credit Suisse First Boston as well as defending four national corporate clients under government investigation. Finder also has government experience, having served as US attorney for the Southern District of Texas. 

Joel Androphy and David Berg from Houston’s Berg & Androphy are “two stellar practitioners” whom fellow attorneys “regard very highly”. Androphy is a prolific writer in the field and is author of the annually updated White Collar Crime: Civil and Criminal Practice Treatise, West Group, 2006. Founding partner Berg is a “very experienced” and has taken many white-collar cases to trial. 

Robert Sussman is another leading light and practices with Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP. Sussman is “a fantastic lawyer and great teacher” and he has served as programme co-chair of the white-collar crime seminars at both Georgetown and SMU law schools. He also received recommendations for his knowledge of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations.

Rusty Hardin is the founder of Rusty Hardin & Associates PC and comes highly recommended by his peers. Hardin and his team have represented Arthur Andersen since November 2001 as attorney-in-charge in over one hundred lawsuits arising out of the financial collapse of Enron. Representing the accounting firm has gained Hardin a great deal of recognition and respect from his peers, with one source noting that “He has got to be good, given what he has done on the Arthur Andersen case.”

Another “very strong” professional who performed well in the research is sole practitioner Ronald Woods. His experience is unparalleled having been appointed United States attorney for the Southern District of Texas by President George Bush in 1990. Woods was also a special agent and legal advisor in the FBI, a state and federal prosecutor in Houston, and served as one of the US attorneys advising the attorney general on environmental crimes policies for the Department of Justice. thomas hagemann from Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP is the leader of the firm’s whitecollar crime practice and a practitioner whose peers “rate as the best”. A former assistant United States attorney in Los Angeles, he was nominated for the attorney general’s highest award for trial lawyers for his work during his tenure. His practice deals with a wide variety of white-collar matters, however he is renowned for his work on computer fraud, environmental crime, health care fraud, public corruption and securities fraud cases. 

Daniel Hedges of Porter & Hedges LLP is another former US attorney for the Southern District of Texas. While in this post in the 1980s Hedges co-founded the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force alongside Dan Webb (of Winston & Strawn LLP in Chicago) and Rudolph Giuliani. He is also chairman of Senators Cornyn and Hutchison’s Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee, which screens prospective federal judges and US attorneys. Dan Cogdell formed the Cogdell Law Group after six years with the firm of Haynes & Fullenweider. Cogdell represented Sheila Kahanek, the former Enron accountant who was acquitted of fraud and conspiracy charges in the controversial Nigerian Barge prosecution in 2004. Cogdell was described to researchers as “truly brilliant”. 

David Gerger, founder of David Gerger & Associates is well known for his defence of the former CFO of Enron, Andy Fastow, throughout his criminal case. Other matters on which he has worked include the successful appeal and resentencing of Dynegy’s Jamie Olis, in which the sentence was reduced from 24 to six years in the Dynegy Project Alpha Securities Fraud litigation. He has also been working on cases involving the Iraq oil for food programme stock options backdating; and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. 

Bennett & Secrest LLP can boast of the inclusion of George McCall Secrest, who also worked on the Enron case. Secrest acted for Kenneth Lay, the company’s former chairman and chief executive. Secrest served as an assistant federal public defender for the Southern District of Texas from 1981 to 1983 and as an assistant district attorney for Harris County, Texas from 1978 to 1981. 

Paul Coggins from Fish & Richardson PC received the presidential appointment to serve as the US attorney for the Northern District of Texas from 1993 to 2001 and is a member of the firm’s white-collar, government, and securities litigation section. He has represented a number of Fortune 500 corporations and public agencies before federal courts and the SEC, and has conducted internal investigations involving a wide array of issues, including alleged tax fraud and securities violations. 

Competitors admire lawyers at of Zimmerman & Lavine for their “intelligence, determination, and loyalty to their clients”. Jim Lavine was praised for his “conviction and drive” and would reside at “the top of my list”, according to one fellow nominee. Lavine was a prosecutor in Chicago, for six years and in Houston for five. In private practice he represents clients that include an executive of Enron Broadband Services who was charged with 17 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud.

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