WSJ Editorial on FASB Proposed Rule Requiring Disclosure of Estimate of Lawsuit Cost

Editorial in the Wall Street Journal — FASB’s Lawyer Bonanza.  Here’s an excerpt:

Under the proposed change, a company facing a lawsuit would have to list on its financial statement its best-guess estimate of what that litigation could end up costing — not just in attorney fees, but in any potential payout. For a company in high-stakes litigation, that means showing its hand to plaintiffs’ attorneys, allowing them to gauge management’s upper estimate of what the case is worth.

The effect will be to force corporate defendants to fight lawsuits with one hand tied behind their backs — assuming the company can even figure the “fair value” of a lawsuit it has no idea if it will win or lose. Predicting the trajectory of complex, often multiyear litigation is inherently unscientific. As we saw with Merck and Vioxx, a company’s stock price can jump or fall depending on jury verdicts whose results are impossible to predict.

BGS