Litigation

Admirer of "the grace" of the now incarcerated former class action lawyer Bill Lerach,  Robert Risk, a settlement planner out of Tulsa Oklahoma is in the process of reforming his website Structured Settlement and Annuity Services, to a what appears to be an RSS feed model.  So far the new Structured Settlement Services site features bullet points on what the site is designed to accomplish.

Then there's the image of bunch of "empty suits"  who are either chasing stray pieces of paper on what appears to be the Great Plains or, hedge fund manager flying paper airplanes (most of which appear have crash landed) on land that is destined for ethanol production.

For someone fighting for "the little guy" it's ironic that Risk would choose such an image, a metaphor of ethanol production's affect on prices that is choking everyday Americans, including tort victims and in causing price increases for consumer goods that directly or indirectly cause tort victims to factor their payments to companies funded by the same hedge funds!

Consider this quote from the article "Next market bubble: farmland!" by Grist's Tom Philpott concurrent with  Risk's February "Lerach gush":

"Worse, say you're a young person wanting to start a new farm -- say, a produce farm designed to sell fancy veggies to all those newly rich farm owners. You're now literally competing with hedge funds for land.

But I doubt the trend can last. At some point, corn-based ethanol just has to collapse under the weight of its vast ecological liabilities. When it does, corn prices will dive, taking land prices along for the ride".

Risk seems to have discarded his own fluid writing style for what can best be described as "Hedwig's Wikipedic" style. Perhaps he should rethink the strategy. While I may tweak Risk for his silly Lerach loving ways, Risk is a more than capable writer who has inherited the family writing genes.

Risk's web site promises, among other things, "to provide Information about factoring", which is referred to as "a transaction where payees sell their structured settlement payments". It is unclear whether or not Risk, who is affiliated with the Settlement Professionals, Inc. brokerage and is a member of the Society of Settlement Planners, participates in structured settlement factoring transactions and if he does, whether he does so pro bono.

It would be refreshing to see such transparency on a web site of someone in our industry.  Let's hope Risk has the guts to do so.