(From Rob Hotakainen in Washington)
Did Carly Fiorina benefit from a judicial ruling made by her father?
That's the allegation in a new book, denied by Fiorina, as reported by Politico:
Here's what Politico had to say:
California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was negotiating for a lucrative job as CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. a decade ago at the same time her father wrote a significant appeals court opinion that the high-tech industry had aggressively lobbied for, a new book reports.
In July 1999, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joseph Sneed, Fiorina's father, issued a ruling that made it far more difficult for class-action lawyers to file securities lawsuits. Breaking with two other courts of appeals, Sneed said a legal reform Congress passed in 1995 at the urging of high-tech executives besieged by such suits meant plaintiffs needed solid evidence of wrongdoing before they went to court.
Seventeen days later, Fiorina was named as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard with a compensation packaged valued at the time at between $80 million and $90 million.
The proximity in time of Fiorina's hiring and Sneed's ruling is laid out in a book released Tuesday, "Circle of Greed," by Patrick Dillon and Carl Cannon. The book chronicles the rise and fall of one of America's most successful plaintiffs' lawyers, Bill Lerach, who was a target of Congress's 1995 reform effort but continued to win billions in settlements even after it passed.
To read the entire story, go here.
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