Are Claw Back Lawsuits the Right Thing to Do?
In my opinion, claw-back lawsuits are the best solutions to an overall bad situation. Yes, the investors who are getting sued through the claw-back lawsuits are also victims of Madoff’s fraud. However, every attempt must be made to gain justice for as many of the victims as possible. I also like the fact that most Claw Back Lawsuits provide measures to prove a “Hardship”. This provision allows defendants of these Claw Back Lawsuits to prevent absolute ruin by proving that forfeiting the profits gained from the Madoff scheme would severely hinder them. If not, how should we divide the estate among the Madoff investors?
In my opinion, what Irving Picard is trying to accomplish is the best solution to an overall bad situation. If I were to suggest an alternative method to divide the Madoff estate, I would recommend investing all of the funds collected back from the Claw Back Lawsuits and then distributing the proceeds from the investment indefinitely to shareholders based upon their original investments.
Are there any "innocent victims" of this scheme, or should all of the investors known that the returns Madoff produced were too good to be true?…show more content… Investors should have realized at some point that the returns they were receiving were out of line with what average market returns were year after year. Even when the global economic situation started to worsen and suspicions regarding the Madoff Fund started to surface, investors still foolishly and willfully believed in what was becoming an investment that was increasingly becoming suspicious. Although the majority of blame can be placed on Madoff and his team of fraudsters, some blame must be placed on investors for maintaining a certain level of incompetence or
