TLC AFTER 9/11
PRO BONO
BENJAMIN BUNN, KEN TUREK, AND THE SAN DIEGO LAWYERS
WHO HELPED THE FAMILIES OF 9/11 VICTIMS BY NYSSA GESCH
SOMETHING THAT
FEELS LIKE JUSTICE
STAYING UP LATE WITH
MIKE ATTANASIO BY AMY KATES
Ten years ago, with the country still reeling
from the 9/11 attacks, the Association
of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA, now
the American Association for Justice)
sent out an email request for volunteers
to represent families of the victims. The
organization managed to get more than a
thousand responses. In one business day.
“After 9/11, we’re looking around saying,
‘What can we do to help?’ And it was just
such a natural for us as trial lawyers to step
in, doing what we know how to do, and to
help these families,” says Benjamin Bunn,
a partner at Hulburt & Bunn.
The incoming president of the Consumer
Attorneys of San Diego for 2002, Bunn
made it a priority to reach out to San Diego
law firms and encourage them to get
involved. “[ATLA] basically set up this pro
bono, nationwide law firm, if you will, this
effort called Trial Lawyers Care [TLC], to
get trial lawyers from across the country to
step in and help represent these families
for free,” Bunn says. It was the largest pro
bono effort in history.
“Everybody wanted to make a
difference,” Bunn says. “That’s the overall
thing. Nobody did it for the press. Nobody
did it to bring attention to themselves.”
While Californians were affected by
9/11, Bunn’s group specifically asked to
represent families in the area of the attack
to alleviate the burden on New York and
D.C. attorneys. This meant a larger time
commitment than normal because of the
coast-to-coast travel involved.
“They were still cleaning up the site,”
Bunn says of his first trip to New York. “We
went, obviously to ground zero, and there
were still photos and flyers and people still
looking for [missing] family members. …
There was still that huge sense of tragedy.”
Bunn, along with law firm partner Chris
Hulburt, took on three cases for TLC.
Like other wrongful death suits, he had
to develop the complex economic side of
the case while paying special attention to
the emotional aspects. “The emotional
side you needed to understand because
you wanted the family to know they were
getting the best representation possible,”
says Bunn.
Daniel Stulac, a star on the rise at
accounting firm Arthur Andersen, was
promoted to partner and appointed lead
auditor for international software company
Peregrine Systems Inc. in 2001.
Things went downhill fast.
His firm, of course, collapsed in the rubble
of Enron. “No sooner had the dust settled
from that, like, one-two, he got swept up into
this investigation and his whole life turned
upside down,” says Mike Attanasio, vice chair
of Cooley LLP’s litigation department.
The investigation probed Peregrine
Systems for falsely inflated financial
statements.
“The real interesting part of the case,”
says Attanasio, who represented Stulac, was
“the decision to indict the outside auditor
as an active participant in the fraud. To my
knowledge, and no one has ever corrected
me, [there hasn’t been] late Enron-era
prosecution of an outside auditor from a Big
Five accounting firm for participation in the
fraud. That includes, by the way, Enron. … As
bad as Enron was, none of the audit team nor
the firm was ever alleged officially to have
participated in fraudulent accounting.”
According to Attanasio, the prosecution
now wanted to make that point. “They
were very keen to prosecute not only those
who had participated in the fraud, but
any gatekeeper, such as an auditor, who
allowed knowingly, in their view, for the
fraud to happen,” he says. “We thought
that was overreaching.”
Although a plea agreement was offered,
Stulac chose trial. “I knew I was not guilty,”
Stulac says. “I had full confidence in Mike.
I had tremendous faith. It was very scary at
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