Fighting Cousins?

Over at Securities Litigation Watch, Bruce Carton has a post about an article in The Recorder regarding litigation between counsel in the respective state and federal derivative actions involving Tenet Healthcare.

Counsel in the federal case are Cauley, Bowman, Carney & Williams, LLP. Counsel in the state case include Robbins Umeda & Fink, LLP.

Those two firms have some history. Let's try and untangle the relationship.

First a little background.

Back in the late 1990s, Paul J. Geller and Scott R. Shepherd were partners in what was then known as Shepherd & Geller, LLC. That firm now exists as Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah, LLC, a 13 attorney firm with offices in 5 states.

S. Gene Cauley and Paul Geller formed a partnership and that firm eventually became Cauley Geller Bowman & Coates, LLP.

The three name partners at Robbins Umeda & Fink were the San Diego office of Cauley Geller prior to 2002, when they left to form their own firm.

In 2003, Sam Rudman left what was then still Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach to join what became Cauley, Geller, Bowman, Coates & Rudman LLP.

We have to take a brief side trip at this point in our story. On May 1, 2004 Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP officially split into Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP and what was then known as Lerach Coughlin Stoia & Robbins LLP.

After that, on May 6, 2004, the Cauley Geller firm announced that it would split into two parts - Cauley Bowman Carney & Williams PLLC and Geller Rudman PLLC.

Then on July 1, 2004, Geller Rudman announced that it was merging with what was then Lerach Coughlin Stoia & Robbins LLP to form what is now Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP.

Did you follow all of that?

Good, then you can play my new game - Six Degrees of Sam Rudman.