The New York Times today has an article that is a welcome corrective to some of the coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandal that drew criticism from Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal. It's a profile of the trial lawyer, Jeffrey Anderson, who is driving a lot of the press coverage:
he insists that the cases, which number more than a thousand (he says he has not counted), have never been about the money.
Yet in 2002, he estimated that he had at that point won more than $60 million in settlements from Catholic dioceses, and he acknowledges that in the most complicated cases, he may receive as much as 40 percent of a settlement or judgment.
Mr. Anderson drives a Lexus, leads his small firm from a former bank building replete with chandeliers, dark leather and marble, and co-owns with his wife a Victorian inn that promises "the ultimate experience in luxury, privacy and romance."
It's so rare to see the Times's bias against the rich creep into an article about a plaintiff's lawyer who is one of the newspaper's own sources that it's almost worth celebrating.
