Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called in-breeding; from this comes idiot children... and other lawyers.


GOP candidate for governor and Mr. Negative Commercial Guy Ron Saxton involved in unethical behavior?

Say it ain't so.

Ron Saxton, the Republican candidate for governor, played a more active role than previously acknowledged in his law firm's disputed 2003 decision to drop the city of Portland and help a Texas investment firm buy Portland General Electric.

The Oregon State Bar investigated whether actions by the Ater Wynne law firm violated conflict-of-interest rules. The bar's report criticized Ater Wynne but concluded it had to drop its investigation because the city did not want to reveal confidential information that might jeopardize its attempts to buy PGE.

First - I HATE PGE with a passion. Long waits whenever you have to call and overall horrible service at inflated rates are about the best you can expect from a monopoly like they represent in the Portland area.

But more importantly I'm not sure what the city of Portland's deal here is but what the hell is keeping them from turning over information because of "confidentiality?" I would assume Saxton had the confidential information anyway since he and his firm were representing the city before they decided to switch and represent Texas Pacific.

That's why the behavior appeared to be unethical to begin with. You don't switch sides midstream if you're a law firm.

3 comments:

Overdroid said...

I thought Enron owned PGE. Oh wait. . . Enron's still around, right?

Dean Wormer said...

Yeah, Enron's still around.

But they're "reformed."

Don Snabulus said...

Deformed. You got that right. Oh, wait. RRRRRRRRReformed? No way.