Email to Symantec CEO and Board

For CEO and Board re Symantec class action lawsuit

Dear Mr. Thompson, Mr. Salem and other Symantec Board members,

My son has received notice of the class action lawsuit against Symantec Corporation that is pending in the Superior Court in Santa Clara County (http://www.heverly-nortoncase.com/pdfs/ConsolidatedSecondAmendedComplaint.pdf).

I regret that corporations such as Symantec seem to feel powerless in resisting the predations of plaintiffs' lawyers and that Symantec, like so may other corporations, cannot justify fighting back and chooses to lie down and settle.

I have been notified of being in the plaintiff class in several class actions in the past few years, and I have filed these objections, but to no avail: Objection to attorney fees in Charter Cable class action (2004); Objection in credit card currency conversion class action (2007); Objection in Xerox securities law class action (2008); Objection in Nortwthwestern Mutual Life class action (2008).

My son may file an objection in the Symantec class action, but past experience indicates it unfortunately will be pointless, particularly when the corporation chooses to lie down and settle.

It would be nice to receive encouragement from the Symantec Board, but I suspect that will not happen.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Email to Pepperdine University business professors

Below is an email I sent to Pepperdine University business school professors whose area of specialty is behavioral science.

Subj: Behavioral science and Symantec class action lawsuit
Date: 4/20/2009 ____ A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: RDShatt
To:


Dear Professor ___________,

This email has its genesis in behavior theory based on common human knowledge and experience. I don't know whether there is an imprimatur to be gained from a behavioral scientist, but I would like to throw the matter out to you as a Pepperdine business school faculty member specializing in behavioral science, and the matter having a context in a class action lawsuit against Symantec Corporation that is pending in the Superior Court in Santa Clara County (http://www.heverly-nortoncase.com/pdfs/ConsolidatedSecondAmendedComplaint.pdf).

I contend that corporate wrongdoing is conceived, designed and implemented by individual corporate officers, employees, agents, and others, and that ethical business conduct is fostered by holding those individuals accountable. I further contend that the country's civil liability system undermines business ethics because it distracts attention and diverts economic resources away from establishing clear guidelines governing actions on behalf of a corporation and holding officers, employees and others individually accountable under those guidelines. My contentions are set forth at length in this article: Does the Law Undermine Business Ethics?

I think the Symantec class action lawsuit is a very good case in point.

The notice that my son received describes the gist of the case as follows:

This lawsuit against Symantec Corp. (“Symantec”) alleges that Symantec, the
company that sells Norton computer and Internet security products, has an
unlawful policy of terminating subscription time of certain customers who
purchased upgrades, without providing a credit or refund for unused subscription
time, and that Symantec fails to disclose this policy. The lawsuit asserts that
each class member purchased Norton computer security software which came with a
subscription for regular “content updates” which keep the security software up
to date. These updates are delivered by Symantec via online downloads through
the LiveUpdate feature of the Norton software. As the subscription expiration
date approaches, the Norton security software prompts the user to consider
renewing his/her/its subscription for another term and also presents an
opportunity to upgrade to a new product by making an online purchase. If the
user then chooses to purchase an upgrade, the new subscription begins when the
upgrade is installed, not when the existing subscription expires. Plaintiffs
allege that the new subscription should begin when the existing subscription
expires, and that Symantec unlawfully terminated subscription time without
providing a credit or refund and without disclosing this policy.

Symantec denies these allegations and asserts that, at all times, its actions
and business practices have been lawful and appropriate. The Court has not ruled
on the merits of the claims. This means that there has been no ruling as to who
wins and who loses.

Under the settlement agreement for which court approval is being sought, the offer to each member of the plaintiff class is a $15 voucher or $2.50 cash. The requested attorneys' fees are $2,275,000.

Would you care to comment, as a scientist or otherwise, on my above contentions about corporate wrongdoing and about whether the Symantec class action lawsuit contributes to or does not contribute to (and in fact undermines for the reasons set out in my article) the fostering of ethical behavior by corporations and its employees?

Thank you.

Corporate governance and Symantec class action

Email letter I sent to a Santa Clara law school professor

Subj: Corporate governance and Symantec class action lawsuit

Dear Professor _______,

I contend that corporate wrongdoing is conceived, designed and implemented by individual corporate officers, employees, agents, and others, and that ethical business conduct is fostered by holding those individuals accountable. I further contend that the country's civil liability system undermines business ethics because it distracts attention and diverts economic resources away from establishing clear guidelines governing actions on behalf of a corporation and holding officers, employees and others individually accountable under those guidelines. My contentions are set forth at length in this article: Does the Law Undermine Business Ethics?

I think a class action lawsuit against Symantec Corporation that is pending in the Superior Court in Santa Clara County (http://www.heverly-nortoncase.com/pdfs/ConsolidatedSecondAmendedComplaint.pdf) is a very good case in point.

The notice that my son received describes the gist of the case as follows:

This lawsuit against Symantec Corp. (“Symantec”) alleges that Symantec, the
company that sells Norton computer and Internet security products, has an
unlawful policy of terminating subscription time of certain customers who
purchased upgrades, without providing a credit or refund for unused subscription
time, and that Symantec fails to disclose this policy. The lawsuit asserts that
each class member purchased Norton computer security software which came with a
subscription for regular “content updates” which keep the security software up
to date. These updates are delivered by Symantec via online downloads through
the LiveUpdate feature of the Norton software. As the subscription expiration
date approaches, the Norton security software prompts the user to consider
renewing his/her/its subscription for another term and also presents an
opportunity to upgrade to a new product by making an online purchase. If the
user then chooses to purchase an upgrade, the new subscription begins when the
upgrade is installed, not when the existing subscription expires. Plaintiffs
allege that the new subscription should begin when the existing subscription
expires, and that Symantec unlawfully terminated subscription time without
providing a credit or refund and without disclosing this policy.

Symantec denies these allegations and asserts that, at all times, its actions
and business practices have been lawful and appropriate. The Court has not ruled
on the merits of the claims. This means that there has been no ruling as to who
wins and who loses.

Under the settlement agreement for which court approval is being sought, the offer to each member of the plaintiff class is a $15 voucher or $2.50 cash. The requested attorneys' fees are $2,275,000.

I am writing this email to you because I see that you are teaching a corporate governance class this spring at Santa Clara Law.

Would you care to comment on my above contentions about corporate wrongdoing and about whether the Symantec class action lawsuit contributes to or does not contribute to (and in fact undermines for the reasons set out in my article) the fostering of ethical behavior by corporations and its employees?

Thank you.

Citizen's letter dissemination

I have sent about eighty emails of my "citizen's letter to judges" to judges and others, including directors, trustees, and academic advisors of the American Judges Association, the Conference of Chief Judges, the National Conference of Appellate Judges, the National Judicial College, the National Association of State Judicial Educators, and the American Bar Association Justice Center and its Standing Committee on Federal Judicial Improvements.

Two responses to Vioxx email

Below are two responses I received to my Vioxx email:

From: ________________
To: RDShatt@aol.com
Sent: 3/21/2009 9:32:11 A.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: RE: Vioxx case and business ethics

Dear Mr. Shattuck:

I agree with you that the treatment of corporations as individuals undermines business ethics. Most of the big drug companies have agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle criminal and civil charges of fraud, and it is just a cost of doing business. Even the $1.4 billion Eli Lilly will pay for marketing Zyprexa for off-label uses is small compared with the sales income from Zyprexa. Like you, I believe the individuals within the drug companies who were responsible for unethical or illegal decisions should be held accountable, and until that happens, nothing much will change.

Thanks for writing.

_____________


From: _____________
To: rdshatt@aol.com
Sent: 4/7/2009 12:05:53 P.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: RE: Vioxx case and business ethics

Couldn't agree more! Given the evidence that the top-end management of Merck knew about the problems with this drug, and actively tried to hide it from the regulatory agencies and thepublic, I still can't believe that none of them were charged with criminal negligence causing death!

_______________

Form of email

Subj: Vioxx case and business ethics

Dear _________________,

I am writing this email to you because I recently read Mr. Tom Nesi's book Poison Pills: The Untold Story of the Vioxx Scandal, and you are mentioned in the book.

I contend that corporate wrongdoing is conceived, designed and implemented by individual corporate officers, employees, agents, and others, and that ethical business conduct is fostered by holding those individuals accountable. I further contend that the country's civil liability system undermines business ethics because it distracts attention and diverts economic resources away from establishing clear guidelines governing actions on behalf of a corporation and holding officers, employees and others individually accountable under those guidelines. My contentions are set forth at length in this article: Does the Law Undermine Business Ethics?

In my article, I use the Vioxx case as an example and I say this:

Let us start with all the shareholders who purchased Merck stock in the
weeks leading up to the Vioxx announcement and who suffered an immediate 30% or so decline in value following the announcement. Profits that Merck made from
Vioxx did not accrue to those shareholders, and they are entirely innocent of
whatever wrongdoing Merck committed regarding Vioxx; nonetheless the legal
liability system that is entrenched will give no consideration to those factors
and results in that 30% being taken from them and contributed to the recovery
that the plaintiffs eventually make.

Next consider, if Merck is guilty of wrongdoing, whether any officer or
employee of Merck will be personally punished for his participation in the
wrongdoing. There has been no indication that this is going to happen.

Next consider the hundreds of millions of dollars that plaintiffs’
attorneys will receive in the Merck litigation. Think how those sums might be
alternatively expended in order to pay for programs and activities that would
concretely advance protective and preventive objectives related to drugs such as
Vioxx. These might include: greater FDA funding for post-drug approval
monitoring and studies to detect adverse drug effects; design and implementation
of better safeguards at the physician and patient level relative to decisions
for a drug to be prescribed in a particular case; development of concrete
protocols and guidelines for testing of drugs that drug companies could follow
that would protect them against subsequent liability; development of concrete
“conflict of interest” rules for researchers and physicians involved in testing
or promoting a drug and punitive enforcement of the rules against researchers
and physicians individually.

Ultimately, there is a question of what exactly the wrongdoing of Merck was,
articulated with sufficient specificity, that Merck and other drug companies can
have advance notice of such specifics so they can avoid “wrongdoing” in the
future. For all the billions of dollars that might wind up getting paid in the
Vioxx litigation, no such concrete guidance may be forthcoming at all from the
litigation, and, if that is so, all that happens is effectively a huge transfer
from one set of parties without fault to other parties who have suffered a harm
not caused by any wrongdoing of the first parties.

Mr. Nesi's book strongly reinforced in my mind my article's contentions.

Based on your knowledge and involvement with the Vioxx case, would you care to comment on my contentions that, if society wants to be effective in fostering ethical business conduct, the law and economic resources need to be more focused on the individuals who are responsible for corporate wrongdoing and not so distracted and diverted in going after the collective "deep pockets" of thousands and millions of individuals who are innocent and not responsible for the wrongdoing?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck

A citizen's letter to judges

I am undertaking to disseminate the below "citizen's letter to judges."

Dear Judge ______,

I am writing this letter as a citizen in the midst of the hardship the nation is experiencing in the financial system crisis and associated economic downturn.

There has been much discussion about how corporate compensation structures led corporate officers and others, in furtherance of their personal gain, to abusively disregard property interests and economic value belonging to other parties (such as shareholders, bond investors and home buyers), and how this resulted in great harm to the economy, as well as to those other parties specifically.

As a citizen, I think the compensation structure under which plaintiffs' lawyers operate has resulted in a longstanding disregard of and damage to the economy and to properly balanced societal interests in the civil liability system. There have been numerous books written by critics, such as Walter Olson and Philip Howard, about this subject.

Currently, as the country tries to stimulate its economy and to grow its wealth, businesses and financial assets again, I think it would behoove all concerned to renew their attention to the parasitical activities of plaintiffs' lawyers that sap economic and financial resources and that otherwise ill serve societal interests.

I cannot add much to what critics like Olson and Howard say in their books and what they report in blogs such as http://www.overlawyered.com/.

I would, however, like to make a couple of comments.

First, it is more than ironical that, a few years before the recent collapse in bank shareholder value stemming from risky business decisions motivated by perverse compensation structures for corporate officers and others, the plaintiffs' lawyers, also driven by their perverse compensation structure, inflicted their own billions of dollars of damage on innocent bank shareholder value, such as in connection with Enron. See this article: Enron's smartest guys, crooks, victims and other saps.

Also, similar to the rampant greed of many persons involved in the mortgage loan financing industry that resulted in tantamount robbery, I think the plaintiffs' lawyers greed in their cookie cutter securities law class action litigation that they employ is also tantamount robbery. This was recently exemplified in cases involving Tyco, Xerox and Monster, Inc. See Tyco: On Snookering Clients Out Of $460 Million ; Objection in Xerox securities law class action; and Why aren’t retirement plan trustees screaming bloody murder?

Further I contend that the plaintiffs' lawyers compensation structure has resulted in undermining the fostering of ethical conduct by employees of corporations (see Does the Law Undermine Business Ethics? ).

Judges have an oversight role, and I regret to say I believe some judges fail in that role and are enablers of the plaintiffs' lawyers to the detriment of the economy and balanced societal interests. In several class action lawsuits, I have received notice that I was a member of the plaintiff class, and I have filed objections in three of them, which can be read here: Objection to attorney fees in Charter Cable class action (2004); Objection in credit card currency conversion class action (2007); Objection in Xerox securities law class action (2008); Objection in Norwthwestern Mutual Life class action (2008). In another class action involving Monster, Inc. and Middlesex County Retirement System, I did extensive emailing to government retirement systems and to others involved with corporate retirement plans to try to get them to scream bloody murder. See the entries in this link. Also see this about a Southwest Airlines class action loss suit, and entries here related to the Xerox class action.

One conclusion I have reached from my efforts is that some of those who are in a position to try to resist the travesties inflicted by the plaintiffs' lawyers believe it is futile and they only risk infliction of further injustices at the hands of the judicial system if they try.

As the country looks for ways to dig out of its problems, it is getting immersed in a new economic regimen of governmental investment and oversight that was inconceivable a year ago. The government, investors and public are taking a close look at compensation structures that led to damage to the economy. Where public funds have been brought to bear, the government is dictating limitations on executive compensation and the payment of dividends to stockholders. As previously indicated, this review should include looking at the country's legal system, the costs it imposes on the country, the compensation structures for plaintiffs' lawyers, and how the same has harmed the economy in the past and will hinder its rebuilding.

Further, just as other government regulators are under scrutiny for how well they performed in their oversight of activities that contributed to the current crisis, so judges ought to be scrutinized for how they have performed in overseeing the legal system and the costs that have been imposed on society.

I hope, your Honor, that you will think about the things I say in this letter and perhaps raise them with other judges.

Thank you very much.


Robert Shattuck
3812 Spring Valley Circle
Birmingham, AL 35223
(205) 967-5586