Class-action firms and new cases.

Your article of Nov. 1 called "Suiting Up" included an unfavorable comparison of the number of "new" cases started by Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP as compared to the number of "new" cases started by my former partner at Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP.

These cases are all governed by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which, as the author herself notes, was passed to eliminate the unseemly race of lawyers to the courthouse, securities class action complaints in hand, so that they could be "first to file" and thereby take control of the case. The Act substitutes a 60-day period, after notice of the first case is published, during which any class member may intervene for the purpose of seeking the status of lead plaintiff" and approval of their selection of lead counsel.

If by "new cases" the author meant first-filed cases, I suggest that she is using an anachronistic criterion that is a throwback to the pre-PSLRA prior age when speed of filing rather than preparation played the larger role in who was appointed lead counsel. However, irrespective of how we define "new" cases, the fact is that, according to the Bloomberg database of securities class actions filed during the period of May 1,2004, through Sept. 8, 2004, Milberg Weiss filed 44 complaints and Lerach Coughlin filed 65 complaints. We doubt that any of your readers would consider either number "paltry."

Melvyn I. Weiss 

Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP